Uilleam
by mellowenglishgal
Summary: Bethany, 17, finds herself on the Island the night after a car-wreck; there, she discovers some of her potential in a crash-course on the Lore. She fights to survive-and struggles with her conscience over a vengeance-crazed Lykae intent on claiming her. While torture weighs on his damaged mind, Uilleam seeks his mate to soothe him...until he learns what she is.
1. Doctor's Appointments

**A.N.**: So _Immortals After Dark_ has a criminally small fanfic-base, and I've decided to remedy that. Rumours are that hints about Uilleam's mate were sown in _Dreams of a Dark Warrior_—whispers that it's the fox-shifter abound, but I wanted to give Thad a twin-sister, and had initially intended for her to be Munro's mate, but it didn't fit. Her and Uilleam make a better pairing. So here it is, Immortal Island.

* * *

**Uilleam**

_01_

_Doctor's Appointments_

* * *

The silence had become blissful; it now warded off the incessant buzzing of the blazing track-lighting above the twin bunk-beds, which had grown steadily louder over the days—or was it weeks?—that she had dwelled in this hell between living and dead, surrounded by…monsters. Beautiful demons, hellish angels. Everything was upside down—especially her being here.

Or so she'd thought.

Her first _examination_ had confirmed what the people in charge had accused her of; she was one of these people. _Loreans_.

If not for the incident with the Incubus in her first cell the morning she had awoken here, she might not have believed her next cell-mate, even with the evidence right in front of her eyes—horned men, pointy-eared women wearing nothing but gauzy skirts, a freaking eight-foot-tall _centaur_ in one of the cells—that she belonged to some hidden world comprised of creatures she had been indirectly taught since birth were myth and fairytale.

But after the incubus, one of a race of incredibly handsome males who fed off sexual energy, had attacked her, things had started to happen—to her own body, things that she couldn't explain away, instincts that had flared when she had fought back, and she had known…she wasn't…_right_. Both her reaction to the violation—and to the blood pooling from a headless corpse before her as poisonous gas was piped into the cell.

Whether this was all just a really bad dream, some kind of a coma, she could understand that, her last memories before waking here consistent with the idea that she could be very well in Limbo, and she thought it was probably the case that she was in a coma, struggling for the right to…wake.

Her first assessment, the people discovering what she 'was'? Stage one of her personal purgatory. She'd been returned to her cell drenched, pupils dilated until a painful amount of artificial light seared her retinas, and the buzz of the lights continued to grow louder as her teeth _ached_, and…other sensations bombarded her body, sometimes less strongly than others, sometimes just a whisper while she slept, dreams and inklings, the remembered private touch of the incubus, the thought of Ray…

Her 'meeting' with the man they called Magister had come not long after her first examination. Blademan, the colourful inmates nicknamed him, because he gutted his victims, other members of a world her cell-mates called the _Lore_. The pale-faced man with soulless eyes had…asked her questions, pressed a little button that delivered immeasurable pain whenever he believed, wrongly, that she was withholding information.

He had demanded she tell him why _she_ was the only female vampire in known existence.

News to her: she _basked_ in sunshine, she didn't just walk in it; she loved Tex-Mex; and the only time she'd felt inclined to _nibble_ anybody was her boyfriend's collarbone when they were out parking at the lake.

During the Magister's interrogation, she'd passed out from the pain of the poison, silently, shamefully admitting to herself that…the blood that had saturated everything the night of the accident…had made her pleasure-points _throb_, her teeth aching as they sporadically had throughout her interminable confinement—especially when she woke on the verge of coming, her dreams making her ache with emptiness.

When she had woken in a new cell, she'd been given a makeshift sling from a pillowcase, gifted by the female leopard-shifter with vibrant emerald eyes who had set her dislocated shoulder to rights.

When they had learned of the Magister's questions, she had told the shifter her honest answers: she was from Harley, Texas; she'd never bitten anybody in her whole life; she ate her mama's cooking every night at family-dinner; she hated wearing bras; she didn't like the girls at her high-school for calling her the "BFG"; she was adopted; and had near flunked her Politics class last semester.

She didn't tell them about the accident. She figured, this was her passage to Hell, they probably already knew why she was here. Fact of the matter was, she was here now, and the shifter, Jazira, said nobody who was "drugged-'n-dragged" here ever left.

When she'd told Jazira the questions the Magister had asked, about the Lore, and vampires, and why she was the only female vampire known to exist, the Invidia who shared their cell had attacked.

Loreans didn't take kindly to _rats_. In the words of Tig Trager, "Rats deserve to die". And the Invidia, female embodiments of discord who forced men to self-castrate or die, had thought the same of _her_. So she'd attacked. For the second time, instinct had exploded through her mind like a time-bomb going off, one minute, calm, miserable and aching from torture and captivity, stunned by her surroundings and this whole new world, next second, mindless _lust_ for violence. To strike out, to _slay_.

Again, she'd blinked down at a pool of blood, her hands sullied with it, a disembodied _head_ gaping up at her with a grimace of bewildered pain. The Invidia had never seen it coming. But she'd got what she wanted; Bethany wouldn't speak a word of Lorean secrets to the humans running this sick operation.

Because she couldn't speak.

Turns out the tongue _was_ the fastest-healing part of the body. Even for someone who hadn't reached their immortality yet.

Jazira guessed she was on the very _cusp_ of her immortality—she had explained that when Loreans reached the age at which their body was its strongest, or best suited to survive the future, it froze, forever regenerating back to that original form, never aging…the only way to die, beheading, immolation…literally only a _handful_ of ways.

But before that milestone, _immortality_…well, Loreans were very much susceptible to injuries, and death. Just like the human Bethany had thought she was, she was still vulnerable. And never before had she felt so vulnerable and violated as her…_examination_.

They'd tested some sonic hearing thing on her first—and after that, the buzzing noise from the lights, the frustrated howls and nerve-shattering shrieks of the other inmates, the screams from their nightmares and their fury, the fights that broke out in different cells amongst alpha-males unused to confinement…they'd been _silenced_. So blissful, so peaceful; after the pain, the silence that enveloped her was like a gift.

No tongue to speak, no ears to hear. Her body had become her personal haven…for that one _moment_, she had been free, free of the frustrated screams and whispers and _noises_ of the other hellish inmates, free to close her eyes and look inwards, to escape. Blissful; she had only _sight_, and when she closed her eyes, the lack of noise let her just…let go. She slept more and more, able to block out everything, even coming as close to _smiling_ while she dreamed of Ray, and of Melanie and her insatiable boyfriend Joseph. She could imagine that they were there with her, wherever she wanted them to be. She knew what had happened the night of the accident, had heard the Sheriff at the hospital…but that was what infuriated and confused her the most about this whole ordeal.

The people—half-horse though some might be, red-eyed, horned, _winged_—in this containment facility would live (if they hadn't been caught by dirty ambushes, bad form and _charge-throwers_) forever.

Forever. Not eighty years, tops. Their lives couldn't be cut short by a fast car, a freak shower and a ravine combined to create her nightmares. Nothing short of a beheading or immolation from unearthly fire could kill an immortal dead, forever.

Not even _vivisection_.

The humans called it 'examination'—and they did examine the cell-mates up and down the ward…while they were conscious.

Even if she hadn't heard the whispers, and been brought to nausea, her fangs aching for the blood dotting the clothes of victims dragged past her cell, their skin stapled closed like a zipper down their chests, her latest _visit_ to Doctor's office had confirmed everything evil the immortals suspected of the _humans_.

When she roused from deep bouts of heavy, blissful sleep, she was vaguely aware of tiny details, amassed and painstakingly catalogued each time she drifted back from unconsciousness. She lay on something soft, and someone had draped a sheet over her, soft from constant use, warming her chilled hands and legs. When consciousness teased at her mind, she sometimes was aware that light glowed to the right-side of her face, and that at times, someone touched her wrist. But she drifted off to that deep, rich sleep, where the fiery pain in her chest and stomach disappeared, where she had sound, and could talk to the friends she imagined were with her, in the flatbed of Joseph's truck, watching bonfires, drinking beer and _laughing_, throwing a baseball, the stars twinkling overhead, the radio tuned to her favourite country songs.

She was in solitary, trapped inside her very own skin, and it was marvellous. Those times when consciousness threatened, when she was close to waking but still deeply entrenched in sleep, dreams more real than this hellish prison-facility soothed her aching body and her pain-drenched, tragedy-saturated mind.

She saw her friends, played _Life_ with them, and poker, betting pretzels, gumdrops, Bazooka and lollipops, laughing as they listened to music and teased each other about sex—what else did teenagers really talk about?; she didn't see Thad, though, or her Gram or Mama. Guess they _couldn't_ come with her. They watched movies, tossing popcorn at each other, giggling, and ate cheese-fries and _Dr_ _Pepper_; she gave Melanie manicures, Mel putting Bethany's thick, long hair into different 'dos, and the boys tossed a football over the coffee-table littered with Joseph's makeshift bongs, bags of Lay's and Bethany's brownies.

She didn't want to wake up; these dreams were too precious.

As her Gram said, there was a fine line between denial and faith.

She'd say Beth wasn't on the _healthy_ side of that line.

But, with her heart carved out of her chest, in more ways than just the physical, Bethany wasn't exactly at her healthiest now.

She started to believe the shifter, after everything she'd gone through…the _examination_…a shudder passed through her body, and she gasped, fighting the nausea that roiled her empty stomach, and opened sightless eyes, panicking; someone touched her wrist, rubbing a warm thumb against the back of her hand, and it was a gentle, comforting touch; she calmed, already forgetting what had got her worked up even in such deep, comatose sleep.

Consciousness blinked in and out, like flashes of light in a riotous gym during a school-dance, and she became more and more aware of her surroundings, staying lucid for up to a minute each time, and if she had had her hearing, she might've recognised that she was regaining more strength than she knew, for she would've heard the buzz of the lights, the whispers of the inmate-grapevine, the frustrated shrieks of the other creatures, the snaps and snarls of the true monsters, the coaxing and gentle words of her cell-mates all drifting over her near-constantly like a light blanket, but she couldn't hear, and her recovery seemed interminable. She could feel, though, and as the pain in her chest worsened, she knew she was regaining consciousness from her coma, and she could feel, sometimes, someone moving her legs, like stretching. Her arms, too, and someone had removed her boots to massage her feet, getting the blood circulating. Whoever it was, they were trying to help, trying to keep her healthy while she recovered, physically, from the most despicable surgery anyone had ever undergone—the writers of _Criminal_ _Minds_ would've shied away from writing this story due to the unimaginably gruesome nature of the experiments carried out on the abducted prisoners.

The first day she moved, it was a gruelling, pathetic attempt; one eye squinting open, bleary against the blazing artificial light from above, she was shivering from cold, despite the fiery explosion in her chest, and when she rolled slightly onto her side, she hissed, grunting with pain, at something inside her chest. It was the most unnatural thing she had ever felt; she had never been made more acutely aware of her own body than being in this Purgatory, and she knew something was wrong.

If she had ever had a period, she might've suspected these were the most hellacious cramps she had ever experienced. She had heard other girls moaning about cramps; she had always secretly envied them their pain.

Meant they could have _babies_.

She exhaled a pain-drenched hiss, leaning heavily on her elbow, trying to take the weight off her torso, and something flickered in front of her—a familiar face…the shifter. Jazira. That was her name. She was aware that the shifter busied herself, as a huge male with blazing sapphire eyes touched with lines of tension gently held her aloft with huge, warm hands; when he eased her back, it was against a mound of borrowed pillows, propping her up at an angle, and gently tucked the blanket higher to keep her warm.

Silence bombarding her, dreams coaxing her to a world of colour, sound, laughter, freedom, lack of food had her drifting off again, vaguely aware that sounds could reverberate, for she could decipher the timbre of the blue-eyed male's voice, as she would have a low, throbbing hum underwater, and he and the shifter spoke constantly to her, whenever she was conscious enough to think, _Maybe I should open my eyes now_? She watched their lips—the male's were incredibly lush, almost too pretty for a man; she had become gifted with lip-reading after the sonic experiment had deafened her. But she was too tired for her brain to engage in deciphering their words. Too tired, too much effort, something inside her chest felt wrong, and she could vaguely scent dried blood on the stagnant air. The scent was familiar, and tears welled and stung her eyes, but didn't fall, as she remembered the last time she was surrounded by the scent of blood; her nightmare returned. Except it wasn't a nightmare—it was a rerun of something truly tragic that was actually a memory. Her own memory, the last thing she remembered before hearing it from the Sheriff at the hospital…then nothing; she had woken here, to a horned female demon, a pointy-eared fey, and a desperate incubus with his hands inside her shorts.

The scent of blood had washed over her once again, as she severed the incubus' jugular with her _claws_. Instincts had screamed within her, to finish him, take his head…and she…_had_, before the humans running this place had had time to realise what was going on in their cell and had gassed it to knock her out…and clean up the mess of cooling blood that had her pleasure-points throbbing beyond endurance, her fangs aching like she'd had a real bad appointment with her orthodontist.

This time the blood was only a scent drifting on the air, like a memory, and she was aware that someone was washing her face with beautifully hot water, lulling her. She drifted off again…

Agonising. She had never felt such pain—and it was the pain that drew her from her coma, keeping her from re-entering the dreams that had made her internment bearable. She'd been throwing a baseball in the backyard with her daddy… She peeked around blearily, still propped up, a blanket tucked over her, and she started to squirm.

_Sit up, Beth_, she thought. _Sit up_. She could do it. _Sit_ _up. Constant vigilance, like Mad-Eye says…Gotta sit up. Watch…_ Drawing on a hidden well of strength and determination she had inherited from her gram and her mama, she sat up. Weight settled on her stomach and lower-back, but she gritted her teeth and peeked around. The lights were never turned off, not even at night-time, but the opposite bunk featured two mounds hidden by blankets. _Bed_-_time. Or are they just nappin'_?

In this hell, the inmates slept for emotional fortitude rather than to replenish vigour; the torque she had woken up with her first day in this place depleted any mystical abilities and strength. After days—weeks?—new inmates stopped trying to wrestle the torques from around their necks; in her first days here, she had watched time and again as other prisoners almost asphyxiated themselves trying to remove them. One red-eyed vampire had been so maddened he'd started clawing at his own throat to partially-decapitate himself to remove it. The humans had knocked him out and cuffed his hands behind his back.

Slowly, agonisingly, she moved her legs off the bed, gritting her teeth against the grunt of pain as pins and needles shot up her legs, seizing them in place; apparently her cell-mates hadn't done her exercises for her before bed. _Deep, calming breath; allow the pain to pass, move_.

The fiery ache in her chest returned, along with shivers. A fever. Now she had the flu on top of her recent—_how recent_?—vivisection? Or…was this the cause of an infection? Her hands icy, her head fevered, she moved slowly, panting deep breaths, and…something told her…not to look at her chest. But she could see her legs; she was still wearing her shorts, and she was glad the laser treatment she'd had had actually worked. No embarrassing need to shave her legs—in the _sink_.

After her first week of _not_ eating the slop they were each given, she had realised…she didn't have _any_ bodily-functions, not just…not just the fact she didn't menstruate. She didn't need to use the toilet hidden behind a screen—why they'd put it up, she didn't know; there were cameras constantly monitoring them from the ceiling. The shifter, Jazira, said this was probably due to her ancestry; vampires traditionally didn't _eat_; they drank blood. They _could_ eat; Jazira said some Lorean females couldn't become fertile without consuming the fruits of the earth. And as for periods—Jazira's own words had been, "Yuck! Can you imagine preternaturally strong Lore females with swords, the ability to level mountains _and_ PMS?"

Jazira had also told her about _overstimulation_, a developing hypersensitivity to sight, sound, perception and touch that came on just as immortality started to approach, as well as a rollercoaster of supernaturally heightened emotions—especially _lust_. She knew she had felt it, off and on before her _examination_…now she just felt like she had the flu. And it sucked.

There was condensation on the metal walls of the cell. Condensation meant _cold_… She panted a breath, moved to the edge of the cot, and shimmied up toward the glass wall. She wanted to _see_. Anything. Something different than the underside of the empty upper-bunk.

She made it. She had moved five feet to the edge of the metal wall, where it connected to the two-foot-thick space-shuttle glass looking in on the corridor, the cell directly in front and glimpses of the diagonal ones either side.

She sat herself against the metal wall, legs sprawled out before her, and rested her head back; the cold seared through her threadbare, soft-as-anything white t-shirt, which fell deeply off-the-shoulder, revealing her right shoulder. The cold pierced her, battling the fever in her head and soothing the ache in her chest, the ache she still hadn't investigated out of…well…_fear_.

She knew what had happened; she had been completely conscious and…_petrified_…when that bitch had cut her open. _Don't think about it, Beth…tuck it away, put it in the past and leave it there…don't let 'em hurt y'all anymore'n they already have by dwellin' on it_.

She knew what they had done…she just couldn't believe she was here sitting up against the chilly wall, thinking about it. She couldn't look down and see the incision she felt was stapled and seeping, angry, because that meant it had happened…and she hadn't died from it. She was healing—_slowly_—but that meant everything Jazira had said was right.

Bethany did indeed belong to this world Jazira called the Lore.

And her blood-daddy'd been a _vampire_.

And everybody in the Lore, whether they sided with the Pravus or the Vertas armies, hated vampires. Even the ones that weren't red-eyed: Jazira had told her about the two warring vampire armies; the red-eyed, crazed Horde, and the Forbearers, who were forbidden from drinking straight from the flesh.

In the days—weeks?—before being deafened, Jazira and Bethany had talked. A lot. Nothing much else to do, anyway, and Bethany was from a family dominated by strong Southern women; she, her mama and her Gram were _chatty_… She wondered, not for the first time, how Thad was holding up keeping Mama and Gram together. Her sweet superhero, her twin-brother was the golden boy, both in their family and within their little community, a football god filled with humility and a _good boy_.

She hoped none of her family ever found out what was happening to her—if indeed this was real, if it wasn't just her own personal Purgatory she had to earn her way through to get to the fires. If Gram ever found out what those doctors had done to her… In fact, to her dying breath she'd never let her mama know how bad she'd been violated…it would break her heart. And Thad? He'd go near-mindless from guilt for not protecting her…the man of the family since their daddy died. He took his position _real_ serious.

She wondered what the humans had told her family. She could only imagine their grief at the accident.

The whole town would be feeling it.

And it was her fault.

Maybe they thought she was a fugitive, running from responsibility, afraid of being duly blamed. She'd never run from responsibility in her whole life; since they were babies, she and Thad had known they had to help out around the house, help with their family. Daddy was gone, and it was hard for Mama to be without him.

She could remember her daddy dying; an accident had killed him at the worksite before they could call an ambulance. She could remember the crash. She hadn't even known they were gonna get into that accident that night. After weeks of sunshine, they'd had a shower, making the thirsty roads suddenly slick… She hadn't known she'd have to say goodbye when they'd all piled into the car to go home from the bonfire after they'd spent the weekend camping.

* * *

**A.N.**: I was inspired by the novel _Collision Course_ for Bethany's back-story (I can't really say 'past' when she's a 17-year-old amongst millennia-old warriors!) and the glimpse of Jean Viljean hauling a ship in the waves during the _Les_ _Mis_ trailer—something about Scotsmen in kilts with their hair in berserker-braids, hauling ships in centuries past called to me, I don't know!

Ideas for the jumbo plot point would be killer, thanks; I still wonder who Thad's birth-parents were, KC wouldn't have put him in if she didn't have a use for him later on, with all his potential. For those of you who've read _Shadow's Claim_, I despise Sabine but her interaction with Munro at _Erol's_ was quite sweet.


	2. The Lykae

**A.N.**: Hi, so, this story subtly ties in with my Lords of the Underworld fanfics, which I'm in the process of rewriting; Bethany meets a couple of the characters, and she shares a big scene with Serafina's in _Darkest Delirium_… Anyway, I changed Lillian's name to Bethany. Sounded more…young-human-Texan-female.

* * *

**Uilleam**

_02_

_The Lykae_

* * *

She hated being conscious, as much as she was pleased with herself for sitting up off the bed for the first time in days—weeks?—because it meant her mind was free to dwell on things she didn't like thinking on. But in this place, and in her state specifically, there was nothing she could do but think. And it was _exhausting_.

Now she sat, leaning against the wall, trying not to think; instead, she _observed_. She'd gotten good at that since her ears had been fucked up. Jazira talked about _overstimulation_; how about over_compensation_? With her ears useless, her eyesight and the tingling feeling at the back of her neck and the bottom of her spine strengthened. She had to rely on sight and that eerie skin-prickling sense she rarely used.

The only good thing about this place was that, despite the hideous monsters—evil, winged Vrekeners, red-eyed vampires, "Gotohs" with lethal antennae and contagious, highly-intelligent Wendigo (she'd watched _Supernatural_ to know those baddies were definitely high on the list of Creatures With Which One Did Not Fuck, as Jazira dubbed some of their prison-mates)—most immortals held within were _incredibly_ appealing to look at.

And there were some new tenants in the cells nearby.

Bethany knew the humans brought new 'deliveries' of immortals every few days, and lots of them were moved from cell to cell after torture-sessions and _examinations_, trying to keep males and females separated as much as possible. But from what she could see, the cells were filling up.

She had missed a lot whilst recovering from her recent _surgery_.

She was in no way _healed_ but she had forced herself to sit up, and the sweating metal was lovely against her heated skin. It helped her breathing, despite the pressure sitting put on her lower-torso. She realised she was trembling, but resting her head back helped, so did closing her eyes…

When she opened them again, someone was squatting in front of her—those sapphire eyes blazed, now the lines of tension around them more pronounced as the incredibly handsome pale face peered anxiously at her. When she squirmed and sat up straighter, she peeked around blearily, wondering how long she had been asleep. The male gave her a blazing smile as she roused, glancing over his shoulder—focusing on his lips, she knew he said, "She's awake!"

She raised a hand to knead the heel of her palm against her eyes, then covered her mouth as she yawned. Before her _examination_, she had been alone in this cell with Jazira. The humans had figured, she had killed a starved incubus and a vengeful Invidia; they tempted fate setting her in with a vivacious shifter, who was surprised the humans hadn't just _culled_ Bethany for what she'd done.

This male was new, and she curled her knees up to her chest, biting out a hissing wheeze of pain as cramps skittered through her abdomen. The male gave her a gentle, coaxing smile, as he held his hands, palms out, as if in defence. Then he signed something with his hands as his lips moved; she could follow one, not both, but she had learned sign-language in sixth-grade for a Scouts badge, and it wasn't as arduous as reading lips. He told her, "I'm not going to hurt you". She arched an eyebrow dubiously, and he smiled, tense eyes glittering.

"Who are you?" she signed.

"P-a-r-i-s," he spelled out, and Bethany nodded subtly when he signed _her_ name. "We'd been wondering when you'd wake."

"How long was I…asleep?" The male, Paris, glanced over his shoulder, his lush lips moving as he asked the other cell-mate a question. Bethany peeked around, saw Jazira wallowing on the top-bunk, looking miserable; she sent Bethany a smile, but it was tense. Bethany didn't have to have hearing to know that everyone in this ward was riled with tension; she felt it simmering low and steady, the same way Thad used to get worked up the day before a big game.

She glanced at the male, who signed, "Nearly five weeks."

Bethany hissed out a soft breath. She had been _out_ nearly five weeks…that put her running total, give or take several days, to three months. She had been out for five _weeks_? A true coma, then.

Shouldn't she have woken up in a hospital, cuffed to the bed so the Sheriff could cart her to jail as soon as she roused? Either her imagination was better—or more twisted—than she had ever known, she was on her way to Hell, or she truly was part of a world of mythical creatures hidden from human knowledge.

If she was on her way to Hell, well, she deserved the examination. If this was all in her head, some kind of karmic torture for the accident, while she struggled to wake, well… And if it turned out this all was real and ghouls didn't wear pyjamas like in _Harry Potter_ but were murderous, contagious and mindless monsters, if her birth-daddy had really been a vampire (because, apparently, there were _no_ females left, which left her mother's species indeterminate), if Jazira really could shift into a _leopard_…then this just blew. She had been abducted, imprisoned and tortured for being born.

How did these people figure they had any right to do this to her? She knew what Jazira had explained to her, that this Order believed immortals were going to declare war on humans and exterminate them…given humans would cut the whole goddamned rainforest down if it meant just one more cheeseburger, Bethany could see how the tree-loving nymphs would be offended and decide to eliminate the threat. But Jazira had also told her that humans were just…_beneath Lorean notice_—unless they were notorious in the human world.

And the average human lifespan was eighty years, nowadays; why would immortals _bother_ putting in the effort to kill them off when they just _died_ anyway? Bethany had supposed that to immortals, human lives were as short as flies' life-spans were to humans.

Annoying, all that buzzing, and, ultimately, irrelevant.

She sighed, sitting up a little straighter, and signed to this Paris. "What's been happening?"

Sign was the only method she could communicate by; and she was rusty. Luckily, they had nothing but time, and necessity to fine-tune her study of the language to communicate with the only two people—two _Loreans_—she had contact with in the entire _world_.

Jazira crept down from the bunk-bed, and she and the ancient Greek incubus Paris—yes, _that_ Paris, he'd smirked, when she had teasingly asked whether he had known a princess named _Helen_ (apparently, she hadn't been a princess, but a dark-haired Valkyrie)—filled her in on the latest dish.

The Blademan had captured a notorious Valkyrie named Regin the Radiant—so named because she _glowed_, the last of a race exterminated by the Horde—a ruthless Lykae, a witch nicknamed 'the Incarcerated' and a teenaged halfling who had the inmates whispering about his origins just as they had about her, among other immortals. A _Sorceri_, a race distantly descended from the House of Witches, except they suffered from "oversized egos and undersized skirts" and were among the physically weakest of the Lorean species, had been brought in, as well as a fiery-winged arch-fury, a hellish, horned angel called a Vrekener, the natural enemy of the Sorceri, and the Enemy of Old.

She saw him briefly, and was floored by how…chillingly attractive he was. He seemed to be mulling how best to force the guards touching him to suffer as he was dragged to a visit with the Magister, when he saw her. Eyebrows rose above eyes glazed with pink—a fallen vampire, yet not so completely gone that his eyes had turned full red—and he tilted his head to the side, gazing at her as if she presented some problem he couldn't quite puzzle out. Other inmates had looked at her the same way; her species wasn't easily distinguishable on sight, as it was with nymphs and demons, because, as Jazira had explained, she had no horns, but fangs and a tan, so the humans were obviously missing something with their 'diagnosis' of her. If she was a vampire, she was only half one, and on her daddy's side…again, because she was the only female vampire known on record, to the humans at least.

Though she had woken from her coma, Bethany still slept deeply, far longer than the four or five hours Jazira and Paris slept each night; and sometimes, she resented waking due to the whispers Jazira and Paris relayed in sign to her throughout the day, with nothing to do but watch the corridor.

Days dragged uneventfully, as they had before her vivisection; she was becoming more mobile, though, as she signed to Jazira, was still not returned to her "usual vivacious self" (Jazira had snorted, smiled, and rolled her eyes, remembering their witty conversations "pre-surgery"; Bethany was from a family of chatty Southern women, after all). And, with a signed commentary from Jazira, they watched the ward, and she continued to learn about the Lore, mostly through the Loreans dragged past their cell. It kept her mind off things, surprising herself that she didn't have to force herself _not_ to look down at her chest, _not_ touch the surgical incision and staples she knew were weeping between her breasts. Her willpower was growing.

As her Gram would say, the egg has to crack for the bird to fly.

She was _growing_. Not physically—she'd shot to six-foot-three at fourteen, her breasts heavy by her fifteenth birthday, and by the time she was sixteen had looked to be in her early-twenties—but emotionally. The vivisection would take its toll, but for now, she tucked the memory away and focused on watching, learning. The fox-shifter down the ward had been here for years and knew every routine and security protocol, but nobody had _ever_ made a successful escape-attempt. Still, didn't hurt to notice the guards carried AKs, but even if she got a hold of one, she'd use her fancy knew _claws_ to shred their skin like angel-hair pasta…

They also had to take care of Paris. She and Jazira had learned that he was an incubus; if he didn't get sex on a regular basis, he weakened exponentially. Bethany was an unapologetic virgin, and he had smiled, sweet and sad at the same time, and point-blank refused the sacrifice even if she had offered herself up like a buffet. Jazira had teased, saying she'd spread it when they got a shot at escape. She was saving the last of _his_ strength to protect them all if they got out of this hellhole.

But he was weakening by the day; soon, he had replaced Bethany as the resident invalid, tucked on the bed, emaciating from sexual hunger. That wasn't to say Bethany was felling fine and dandy; quite the opposite. The bitch-doctor had _wired_ Bethany's ribcage shut—the feel of metal scraping bone and the _clip…clip…clip_…of bolt-cutters shearing her ribs was a sensation Bethany would never forget—and despite other immortals digging out the surgical staples, Jazira and Paris hadn't risked Bethany's precarious state by taking out the staples and wire.

The nice guard, who must have Native American roots from his cheekbones, Vincente, had delivered Bethany back to the cell after her vivisection—hell, he had been in the operating-room while she was being cut up, and in his eyes only had she seen sympathy and…grief, nausea; while he'd set her on the cot, he'd murmured to Jazira that Bethany's heart had stopped _twelve times_ during her vivisection. She'd had seventy-percent blood-loss, and even with no medical training, common sense told her she should have been dead already, yet being on the cusp of immortality had saved her life, to be tortured over again. That was how she'd survived the poison, and was glad of it, believing that to be the worst of their methods, but the humans—and, yes, Bethany was now thinking of herself as a separate caste from the Lorean version of Nazis—had had more in their arsenal than she could have imagined. And they continued to wield their weapons—poisoning, torture, threats against loved-ones for cooperation, vivisection, even exposing other immortals to the scratch of a Wendigo or ghoul—on new _guests_.

And she continued to heal, slowly, _so _slowly, and if not for her healing body she might have wondered whether time passed at all. She may have watched _Lost_ a few too many times—her first celebrity crush had been Josh Holloway—so she was hyper-aware of the fact this _could_ all just be a delusion in which all of them were in limbo, earning their passage…_On_.

If the characters on _Lost_ had to deal with their personal demons, well, the Order had scooped her up the night the worst tragedy in her entire history had occurred…and she had to come to terms with the reality of the accident before she could start to atone. But in this place, reality wasn't exactly…well…a possibility. So she _thought_ a lot; sometimes curled up on her cot under a blanket, dozing, sometimes with her back against the metal wall, watching through the glass into the corridor, while Jazira relayed gossip through sign.

The hours were interminable; but they found ways to keep themselves entertained. Tic-tac-toe on the condensation; rock-paper-scissors; and Jazira continued to teach Bethany how to fight. They had started before Bethany's "doctor's appointment" and even if Bethany couldn't hear her yelling, the humans watching the monitors feeding the visual from the cameras in the ceiling heard that they were having a "friendly".

She was having one of her good spells when Jazira sat up, eyes on the corridor, as two guards dragged someone between them; the male looked to have been bludgeoned near to death.

"He's a Lykae; they say he's off for an _exam_," Jazira signed, and Bethany watched, her stomach churning for the male, and she caught the way the artificial light played with the natural sun-bleached highlights in his rich chestnut hair; he was probably _huge_ standing, his arms long, warmly tanned, and corded with muscle that made her want to lick her lips. His features, though bloodied from a very recent beating that'd had Jazira pressing her face to the glass to desperately try and see down the ward, were _beautifully_ masculine; an amazing jaw, a lovely straight nose she inexplicably wanted to run her fingertip down, expressive eyebrows over intense golden eyes shaded with short, gold-tipped lashes, gloriously high cheekbones and straight white teeth blazing against warmly-tanned skin, fangs just discernible, dripping with blood like his long, clever fingers were.

As Bethany sat up, inching closer to the glass, that funny feeling in her stomach came back as she watched him, taking in every detail, especially his hands—they were _huge_, his palms calloused, his fingers long, thick and clever, and tipped with black claws, the backs of his hands lightly scarred, pale webs shining against his richly-tanned skin.

She didn't even notice the guards, too enthralled by the male they were dragging partially-conscious past her cell. Her only coherent thought as her pleasure-points throbbed to a painful degree, heat and wetness blossoming in her panties, nipples hardening painfully, making her suck in a choked breath and shiver?

_Pretty_.

She wondered how his calloused hands would feel against her breasts, the way his muscles would move beneath her fingers as she clutched those immense shoulders, the firmness of his lips against hers.

His eyes flickered an icy, eerie blue as his head lolled, and they dragged him toward their cell.

One second, the Lykae was being dragged by two armed guards; the next, crimson blood splattered across the corridor from severed ankle tendons, felling the guards so the Lykae could pounce, biting and clawing their jugulars. He _was_ huge, and a shiver stole over Bethany despite herself as she gazed in mingled curiosity and horror at the male as he loomed closer; he didn't pay any attention to the guards crumpled in bloody heaps behind him. His gaze was fixated…_on her_.

Eyes burning a bright ice-blue, his elongated fangs and claw-tipped fingers dripping with blood, he _towered_ in the corridor as he stalked to her, colour returning to his face, muscles rippling, and despite evidence of quick weight-loss, his build was _huge_ and intimidating. And those broad shoulders…Bethany wanted to lick her lips, her stomach going gooey, heat flushing between her thighs, and she could not for the life of her look away. She couldn't suppress a shiver as the male crouched before her, his now-golden eyes intense as they swept over her features, seemingly memorising them, as if he had never seen anything more captivating. His gaze was almost _greedy_, consuming, and his lips curled subtly at the corners in a display of breathless incredulity, delighted amazement.

She could have motioned for him to run, to try and escape. She could have broken eye-contact…but she didn't. She couldn't. Never in her entire life had anybody ever looked at her the way he was right now; as if she was the only thing on Earth worth anything. That look, the way he blatantly perused her features, greedily savouring them, eyes alight with curiosity and amazement, a half-smile lingering in the shadows at the corners of his lovely lips. He seemed _mesmerised_, his intense study of her features making her blush, her heartbeat speeding as she swallowed nervously, aware that her body was singing. She had even, without realising it, pressed her palm to the glass, reaching for him, wanting to touch that deliciously tanned skin, anticipating its warmth.

She wanted out of this cage…she wanted to lick the seam of his lovely lips…she wanted to lick the blood from his fangs, suckle his tongue as she kneaded his shoulder-muscles with her fingertips, dig her claws into his arm-muscles as she ground her hips in his lap… She pressed her lips together, gazing with futile lust at the man in front of her, who made her jump when he suddenly grinned. His entire face lit up brilliantly, as if the sun shone directly on him, his eyes glowing with sheer, unadulterated…_delight_; that was the only word Bethany could use to describe it.

_Whoa_, she breathed…_even purtier_.

She jumped when blood spattered the glass; the Lykae's enormous body jerked, and fangs dripped as he roared in pain, rearing to his feet, taking the bullets several guards fired at him; three guards were dead before Bethany could blink and the remaining ones shot bullets to take down the Lykae, despite them definitely not able to kill him; but they took their toll quickly, especially when one soldier shot a poison-dart. The Lykae hit the ground with the strength of a herd of elephants, making the impenetrable structure they were jailed in shake. Bethany felt it in her bones, eyes seared onto the male; nothing could have drawn her gaze from him. _Don't die…don't die…_

The guards acted quickly, despite the knot in Bethany's stomach as she watched, fang nibbling into her lip as she watched the big male being dragged away; he lifted his head, eyes bleary and that eerie blue, locking straight on her, and a dazed smile lifted the corners of his beautiful lips as he was dragged away, leaving streaks of red.

For a long time, she sat curled at the foot of the wall, her palm pressed to the glass; the Lykae had left his own handprint, in the guards' blood, and she was staggered to realise just how enormous his hands were even compared to her own; his fingers were a good two inches longer even than her incredibly long, slender fingers. And that gave her shivers.

Wishing she could lick her lips, she shuddered as she leaned back against the condensation-shining wall. She had _never_ had a reaction to anybody the way her body had responded to just the sight of that male. Yeah, she gushed and giggled over pictures of celebrities in magazines, daydreamed wistfully about boys in her class and imagined fictional characters…but she was a _young_ seventeen-year-old who'd spent the majority of her teen years ridiculed by the other girls in her class, and that relentless teasing and degrading had seriously dampened any self-confidence she could've had despite her personal anxieties. At school she was known as the "BFG", and Ray had been the first boy that she had ever kissed…her first boyfriend. They'd been going out for only three months—interminable to a teenager, she knew, but now, here, in this place, lots of things were put into perspective.

She had been here longer than she'd dated Ray. And yet she couldn't even relate the two periods in her life; three months with Ray had felt like…like a short vacation compared to _this_, this _hell_.

She and Ray had never even gone past tentatively making out while they were parking at the lake. Even if she might have wanted to take things further—her dreams were vivid, the ache to touch herself tugging on her day after day, powerless to do anything because she just…didn't know _how_—she was shy. Her height and the taunts of the other girls at school hadn't done much for her confidence, or her social-life, and while her twin-brother was the golden-boy of Harley, she had been content to slink in the shadows and stay there, wistful, her fiercest friends her mama and Gram. Until Ray; they'd met at a football party Thad had dragged her to, and at six-foot-eight, he'd liked that he didn't have to crane his neck to look her in the eye.

She had been thrilled that for the first time in her life, her height was an attractant—other than Mama needing her to get things from the top-shelf in the closet or hang Christmas lights on the porch and change light-bulbs—but she had never…_she_ had guessed it was because they were both young, that she was _inexperienced_…but she'd never had a physical reaction to Ray, or anybody else, the way her body had just _sung_ for that man.

Dazed, her body throbbing, it was a while before she turned to Jazira, who was smirking, her eyes glowing uncannily. "Who was that?" she signed.

Jazira signed in reply, "U-i-l-l-e-a-m…M-a-c-R-i-e-v-e. He's a Lykae." She smirked again.

"_What_?"

"You were all but digging your way to get to him."

"I was not."

Jazira arched an eyebrow, eyeing Bethany's top pointedly; she glanced down, stifling a wince, and blushed; her nipples were straining against the gauzy cotton of her top. She flushed, frustrated, shivering, and crossed her arms over her heavy, aching breasts, fidgeting.

"I can't help it," she signed, highly uncomfortable, and dragged herself off to her cot, sinking onto it on her back, easing the strain at her lower-back as she melted into the thin mattress, burning with embarrassment and frustration.

Everybody in this place exuded _sex_; and with the cameras in the ceiling, even if most cells had been mixed-gender, the inmates probably wouldn't have indulged unless desperate. And Bethany was too shy and too…_inexperienced_ to sort herself out. It didn't help she had started waking up on the verge of coming from dreams so explicitly detailed she could believe they were real. So most mornings, she sat dazed, needing to release the tension coiling through her body, not knowing how, frustrated and humiliated by her inexperience, until the humiliation turned to rancour and she turned introspective, sitting with her back against the wall—fitting—and _thought_. She'd become very good at blocking out anything unwanted; Fegley, that frigid bitch doctor Dixon, even the Blademan didn't hold the same eerie fascination for her anymore, trying to figure out what had happened to him to make him so…soulless. If Jazira was napping all she had were her memories to tide her over, and thinking was quite lethal.

Her Gram used to say that you could convince yourself of anything if you thought about it long enough. Good or bad.

She had been careless, enjoying herself too much, laughing…their camping-weekend had ended with a bonfire and drinking, she could still smell the beer on the air from the open cans Joseph and Mel had been drinking from in the back. She had been the only one _not_ drinking… Wasn't it the law of the universe that the only people who _had_ been drinking and _didn't_ have their seatbelts on survived?

Maybe the Sheriff had been wrong.

Maybe _she_ was the only one who hadn't survived.

She sighed, fiddling with the gold ring on her right middle-finger. She had been fiddling with it nonstop since coming here; she was surprised her finger wasn't rubbed raw to the bone. She knew it was stupid to think that maybe this was some kind of cosmic payback, this hell, for what had happened. And she knew she alone had survived; dazed and concussed as she had been that night at the hospital, she didn't have to have the Sheriff tell her to know what had happened. She had heard it all, seen Ray's _head_…smelt the blood on the air mingling with spilt beer… She took a deep, steadying breath, fighting back bile at the memory, and released her breath slowly.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she crawled off the cot again, intent on doing some stretches. In this place, there was nothing else to do, but she and Jazira had created a yoga regimen to keep boredom at bay, and she had started doing some of the easier stretches every day as she gained more strength. She had never done yoga before; she was firmly a baseball girl. She looked good in the pants.

Bethany finished her stretching before curling up against the wall, one knee drawn to her chest, fiddling with her ring, when movement caught her periphery and she glanced up.

About eight hours had passed since she had seen that male, Uilleam MacRieve.

She knew this, because the average length of a vivisection was a little less than eight hours, from first incision to stapling; she had seen many inmates hauled off, unconscious, and dragged back…_altered_. It had been eight hours since the Lykae Uilleam MacRieve had been dragged past, half-bludgeoned to death, had seen her and made her body sing, aching for him, for his examination.

Now he was…altered. She had never met him before, only glimpsed him the first time this morning, but even physically he was completely changed. His eyes were the palest blue, glowing eerily, and his lovely tanned skin was now bloodless. A line of staples glinted down his broad chest, muscles contracting with pain as he was dragged, and his ears were bleeding.

They had tested the same sonic thing on him that they had deafened her with. His blood shone bright-crimson in the artificial light, brilliant against his bloodless skin, and her stomach churned with sympathy as she moved to the glass, curled up with her knees tucked up, leaning against the glass, watching sorrowfully. She didn't know these people, but having suffered through her own vivisection, she knew the unspeakable agony, and wouldn't have wished it on anybody…maybe her scary S-O-B eighth-grade science teacher, but…

Even vivisected, bloodless and dazed from unimaginable pain, she couldn't help but appreciate his _huge_ body rippling with muscle, and the beautifully masculine features of his stricken, haunted face. They were dragging him along the floor, and in his wake she could see streaks of blood, residue from his vivisection. As they passed her cell, the guards dragged the Lykae, and he stirred, peeking around, obviously disoriented, but _seeking_. Bethany knew the feeling of disorientation well, and she bit her lip, watching, physically pained by the empathy she felt for the male.

As he writhed, fighting the lethargy of pain and a tranquiliser they had obviously used on him to transport him, his head lolled to the side, and his eyes, that eerie, glowing ice-blue, locked onto her unerringly as they had earlier. They turned the most mouth-watering, panty-dropping golden colour previously inconceivable by nature, and his body relaxed utterly, contrasting the complete anguish his eyes conveyed.

She bit her lip, eyes burning, and pressed her hand to the glass. _Want him_. She wanted to kiss and lick that once-bronzed skin, to coax those incredible lips to kiss her—_everywhere_—she wanted her hands all over that huge, hulking body, she wanted to see those staggering eyes flicker ice-blue with passion as his heat enveloped her, his body pressed against every aching part of her.

She'd never been truly romantic; she was a sentimental girl, yes, but _romance_? She was probably far too young to realise what _love_ truly meant, but now, gazing at the male as he was dragged away, that golden gaze still seeking her, full of anguish, she wondered whether she should've just had sex already, with anybody she could get her clawed hands on. She was hornier than she had ever been in her entire life. And after the sight of that male, their searing almost-encounter earlier, the look on his face just now as he was dragged from the sight of her, she knew all previous yearnings had been tame. Her dreams from now on would feature nobody else. She wanted to explore that enormous body, feel the heat of those calloused palms against her. She shivered, cool, and made her way miserably back to her chosen cot, hiding under the flimsy sheet that offered just a little and therefore much-coveted heat. To be enveloped by his heat, his scent; she knew he'd be needing somebody right this minute, to help him with the staples…the wire…to hold his hand, lie to him and tell him everything was gonna be okay…that it'd get better…they'd be out of here soon…to kiss his temple, and coax him with dainty kisses to his luscious lips…

_Great_. _Horny again_.

* * *

**A.N.**: Anybody who's stumbled onto this fanfic has done so because they adore Kresley Cole—and I admire her for being able to snatch us out of this world and place us unforgivingly amongst Lore creatures, voyeurs to their most private, desperate moments. I'm wondering about Thad's birth-parents…


	3. His

**A.N.**: Hey, everyone who reviewed, thank you! I really appreciate the interest. I adore Immortals After Dark, and there is seriously a lack of appreciation in the form of fanfiction out there, so I thought I'd give my take on the delicious Lykae twin!

* * *

**Uilleam**

_03_

_His_

* * *

—_Yours_.—

After carnage, bliss. Short-lived, but in this place, peace was coveted, no matter how fleeting. Especially when it came because of _her_.

Her.

His Instinct, earlier interfered with by the torque weighing on his mind, was now _gone_. Destroyed.

He had believed he knew torture.

Over a thousand years of life, Uilleam had lived from battle to battle, carousing with his twin in lecherous circles with his onetime king and cousin, Garreth, nicknamed the Dark Prince by his twentieth birthday; he had endured his share of torture—but the worst had occurred _long_ ago, before he had learned to channel his pain on the battlefield, and…and the little one had tamed him, given him purpose…

His _vivisection_—politely and scientifically renamed torture—had mercilessly ripped away the emotional scars he had spent centuries creating to block ancient memories. Ancient nightmares.

And with the tearing of those scars came the memories, the memories brought the horror, and that horror had the beast within him howling, full of anguish and, worse, _confusion_. The daunting and unfamiliar sensation of helplessness…even more so…his Instinct was silent. _Gone_.

How Bowe had lived with it silent within him for decades…

_Gone_. The Instinct had abandoned him. The torture, this one and what he had experienced in the past, coupled to become too much for him to handle.

He clung to the last hint he had heard—a blazing roar that had staggered through him, roused him from a beating he was stunned to have been dealt; for just that split-second, he had felt inexplicable peace, the sight of incredibly sultry ice-blue eyes piercing through the rage that had consumed his mind at his captivity, the beast wanting its turn to be unleashed, the sway of the moon keeping him tethered to lucidity even without windows to feel its caress…

Had…had he seen her _after_ his examination…transported to his cell, he remained where he was dumped by the human guards, his stomach dipping; the guards dumped him unceremoniously, jolting his ribs, making him, half-conscious, growl in pain and rage, not only this torture but every other he had endured over the centuries gnawing at his mind, his beast reined and wrathful about it, fighting against the torque that had diminished his strength to that of a mere _human_. The pain searing through his body was nothing compared to the emotional anguish tearing him apart. The Instinct, gone.

Had he seen _her_ now for the first time…he wouldn't even have _known_…

His.

For the first time in his long life, he had caught a glimpse of her.

For a brief moment, he thought, _This is how Lachlain felt scenting Emmy after all those years in the catacombs_.

Then he was awash with the sight of her, soothing his mind, firing his body, stirring every cell in his being. _Mine_, he thought, biting back a growl of desire, his cock hardened painfully despite his injuries, as he envisioned those beautiful lips, plump and even, the upper-lip sculpted prettily; her lower-lip had shown evidence of being nibbled frequently.

Her face had been _very_ pretty, neat dark eyebrows hovering expressively over aquamarine eyes both icy-clear and sultry in their intensity, brought out by the pretty golden tan that made her high cheekbones glow with a remnant hint of sunburn. Her upper lashes had been thick, dark, naturally curling and long, beautiful, and a great curtain of thick, glossy natural curls billowed around her head, over sun-kissed shoulders, boisterous and full of body, rich sun-streaked chestnut brown sifted with sun-gold, subtle coppers and garnets woven in the shining curls he wanted to play with, shrouding her body to the waist.

Her features had reminded him of the bombshells of the 1950s, classically beautiful, sultry.

She had been curled at the foot of the wall, back pressed to the cool metal, with her bare legs folded up to her chest; he had regretted not seeing her figure, but those bare legs taunted him, wondering just how long and shapely they were, just how _tall_ she was…_what_ she was.

Usually Uilleam could tell at a glance, or a scent; but everything about this place was slowly destroying his very nature, and while he had begun cataloguing every unfamiliar scent—the chatty fox-shifter down the ward, the clinical Doctor, the cheap cologne of the female-hating Fegley (soon to be dismembered)—and recognised the other inmates' frustration, their palpable tension, their futile lust, their fury every time the bastard humans went on their rounds. He had catalogued all scents within this ward and the next easily by the end of his first week here, so he knew which Lorean species had been abducted here—even knew specific scents, like his cousin Garreth's future sister-in-law, Regin the Radiant, a vicious Valkyrie prone to cracking Cesar Milan jokes at the Lykae, and making demons eat things like transistor radios and hubcaps, and the incorrigible witch Carrow Graie—otherwise known as The Incarcerated, and best-friend to Mariketa, mate and wife of Uilleam's other cousin Bowe. And there was a female Lykae halfling within this ward, one so familiar he had been staggered to realise she had been captured also.

But besides Regin, and Carrow, and Ailith the Lymon, there were cells containing who nkew how many contangious Wendigo, and mindless ghouls; he knew there were Gotos, giant tarantulas, Pravus demons in their plenty, Invidia, Horde vampires, and an _arch fury_.

Oh, how he wished he was still playing rugby! How he wished Garreth would return from the Green Hell. His _delightful_ mate who'd destroyed even Uilleam's room in Garreth's place on the Lykae compound had dragged his hide all over the world, following her as she went about some mysterious, apocalyptic-type business, and at last check-in with the clan, Garreth had told Lachlain that Lucia the Archer intended to make her way to Rio Labyrinto. A place even immortals didn't return from.

Garreth had, once. When they had started searching for new places for the Lykae to settle after Lachlain's capture and assumed assassination had made them wary of remaining in the Highlands, so close to the Russian vampire empire.

Garreth had survived the Labyrinto; surely he could find Uilleam here.

Uilleam had only ever needed rescuing once before…_Block it out, Will_, he grated, moaning as he somehow managed to haul himself to the cot, crawling onto it. He supposed he'd had worse hangovers; but the _Instinct_…it had _broken_ during his examination, old scars ripped away, and only thinking of _her_ face had kept him teetering over the brink, the beast warring with the torque that tampered its influence. The beast wanted control. Part of Uilleam wanted to lose himself to the beast, to just…let go. Letting the beast take over was as close to the absolution of death as he could get without dying. Only two things kept him from pursuing that absolute: Munro. And _her_.

Just the thought of her face had the beast gentling, his body yearning with every healing cell, his body firing to life, wanting to lose himself in her.

He remembered the way she had pressed her palm to the glass, eyes locked on him almost _rapturous_ as that little fang dug into her lower-lip, the way her fingers had flexed against the glass as if wishing they were touching his body, those glowing aquamarine eyes lovingly examining his broad shoulders. How large her hand had been, the fingers so long and _elegant_, a pianists' fingers—her palm had been soft, without the telltale calluses of a female trained with arms. She hadn't had claws that he could see, but she'd had fangs…no horns, either, but she had a tan… Intriguing.

And by the gods, had she looked _young_.

Envisioning her face once more, his entire body surged, wanting to have those long, tanned legs wrapped around his waist as he plunged deep inside her, losing himself to lust…to instinct… Her features, beautiful and classic as they were, belied a youth inherent in her pale eyes, so contradictory in their sultry warmth, emanating compassion and a desire almost palpable. One could always tell the age of a Lorean by their eyes; but…experience also affected perceptions of youth, and he knew, despite not knowing her true age—a century or two?—that she had experienced a lot, possibly in a very short time.

He lingered in a half-conscious state, aware of the pain, his ears slowly healing, returning him to the rage and tension of his fellow inmates, the whispers of the grapevine, but also dwelling on daydreams of _her_. His mate. His.

Sometime during the night, he sat bolt upright, something snagging his memory, making his heart race, bile rising, every nerve wired.

Gazing at her face, he had been too enthralled to notice the glitter of surgical metal _stapling her skin together_.

His beautiful mate had been _vivisected_.

He had not scented her…her blood; had her vivisection been recent, his Instinct would have fired to life, forcing him to do anything and everything to get free, to get to her, to…to _protect_ her. Yes, had she been vivisected during his stay here, he would have scented her blood as if familiar—but he hadn't caught her scent until he was passing her cell…and the blood on her white off-the-shoulder top had been very old; someone had obviously tried to scrub it out a while ago, but without proper facilities to do so, hot-water and a beating against the sink were all they could manage by way of laundering services.

Old blood stains on a top, but the staples had still sewn her torso together; Uilleam, as the hours had passed, had been compelled to dig the foreign offending objects from his body, fighting nausea and rage, envisioning her face to keep calm, to stop the wolf taking control…that would leave her completely unprotected, something _he_ couldn't live with even if the Instinct no longer whispered its soothing advice.

He knew the other Loreans who had faced vivisection had plucked the staples—and the wire binding their healing ribcages closed—from their bodies in the hours after their _surgery_. And it had taken him overnight to do so. His mate had at least one cellmate, he had seen glowing green eyes alight with amusement as they glanced between him and the female he now knew was his. Why had they not aided her?

Why had not the wound healed, as his had started to within seconds of each incision? By the end of the next day, Uilleam was healed. Physically. He could still feel each incision, the grind of the bolt-cutters that had clipped his ribcage open, each jagged cut of a saw, the whirr of the electric drills…he shuddered. _Put it out of your mind, Will…Think of her_, he told himself, once again.

_Her_. He didn't even know her name.

That was it. The chatty fox-shifter in the cell beside Regin's had to be useful for something; all that gossip she conveyed, heard from each different ward, she had to know something.

Body healed, mind in turmoil, only calmed by envisioning her face, he spent the next few days _listening_, asking questions. Learning. His innate Lykae curiosity gave him something to live for, learning all he could about his mate from anybody who had anything to say about her.

And, oh, those who had been here longer than he had definitely had some dish. The fox-shifter relayed each bit of gossip she had picked up about the halfling down the ward. She _was_ a halfling, Uilleam learned, which explained why he had had difficulty determining her species.

_I don't believe it_. The shifter claimed his mate was a part _vampire_.

It took him hours to sort that out, to recall that despite his agonising century-and-a-half of torture by unearthly fire that never quite killed him, ordered by the insane king of the vampires, Uilleam's own king, his cousin and one of his oldest friends, Lachlain, had been given a vampire/Valkyrie halfling for a mate. For his _queen_. And Uilleam had never seen a male more contented…and as for marking Emma…Lachlain _wanted_ timid little Emmaline more than life itself.

_Ach, but then, Lachlain has no' experienced the leeches as I have_… He shivered, curled up on his cot, mind still churning. His mate, a vampire?

A _female_ vampire.

The entire Lore knew Emmaline the Unlikely was the only female vampire in existence.

_The wee lass will be happy to ken she's no' alone_, Uilleam thought, picturing shy little acquisitive Emma. In the past year, while Garreth had been literally chasing tail across the world, Uilleam and Munro had taken over helping their cousin Lachlain acclimate to this time; which meant, they had also come to know Emma, their cousin by marriage and their queen. The little blonde had grown up within a coven of warmongering Valkyrie who loved nail-polish and had a penchant for shopping, everything the Lore had ever said about Valkyries' acquisitiveness true to a fault. But being a part-vampire through her father, the now-slain King Demestriu, she had grown up _other_, beloved and treasured but uncertain of her place due to the circumstances of her birth, wincing every time one of her aunts screeched about "leeches". Emmaline was _other_, completely unique to the entire Lore, and that put her in a very lonely position, neither full vampire nor solely of Valkyrie descent, especially since there were no other female vampires.

Now there was.

Which meant his mate's father had been a leech.

Uilleam couldn't help wonder…was his mate's father a crazed Horde vampire? Her eyes had been so deliciously clear, sultry and evocative; had she been taught by her mother not to worship the Thirst as Horde vampires did? Or was her father one of the dubious Forbearers? The Lykae were now rather unwillingly allied with King Kristoff and his army of Forbearers only through a tenuous connection with the Valkyrie—Emmaline was queen of the Lykae, and her aunt Myst the Coveted was wife and Bride of a Forbearer General. Uilleam knew the General had saved Emmaline's life—his price, that the Valkyrie acknowledge his union with their sister.

Uilleam wondered momentarily what monumental task Garreth would be forced to endure before he could claim Lucia as his own.

Mates who were _other_ were notoriously difficult. They didn't understand the Lykae ways, and most of the time, the Lykae didn't understand them, either. If he had learned anything from Lachlain's tale of wooing Emma, and Bowe's mistakes during their epic Guatemalan struggle, even Garreth's dogged pursuit of Lucia—the one time in his endless life that Garreth had ever had to work for a female's attention!—it was that subtlety and understanding were key. On both sides.

If his mate was a halfling, what had her mother been?

It was actually a subject of some debate along the ward. His female had been brought here months ago, and the humans had quickly discerned she was a vampire. Of course, they didn't take into account that female vampires had been wiped out millennia ago. Uilleam wondered if they even knew. And they were obviously too arrogant about their own abilities because they had missed something crucial; his mate had a _tan_. Her lovely high cheekbones had been touched with the last lingering reminder of a sunburn, making them softly flushed, bringing out the glow of her wonderfully sultry eyes.

There was another halfling on the ward, Uilleam had heard, a male in his teens. The poor lad was sharing a cell with Regin the Radiant, and a Dark Fey named Natalya. He was still of indeterminate species, and the debate continued over the female halfling.

Apparently, she had once been chatty; the fox-shifter said his female had had a Texan accent, and spoke like a human—mostly because she'd thought she was one. According to what the fox-shifter had overheard between his mate and the leopard-shifter she shared her cell with, his mate had been adopted by humans in a small town in Texas.

His first thought was, why the hell would a vampire leave his bairns in _Texas_? Then he'd wondered…the Horde eschewed the New World, thinking it beneath them, one of the many reasons he and Munro had helped Garreth relocate their numbers to the Americas—mostly Canada, Nova Scotia, a settlement in New Orleans, after debating the jungles of South America, the rich savannahs of Africa, Munro had even been sent to Australia to seek suitable locations for colonisation.

So did that mean his mate's father had been a Forbearer? Leaving his child, his _daughter_—a rare female vampire, one of only _two_ in the entire Lore—in Texas couldn't have been a thoughtless action. By the way the fox-shifter told it, she'd heard his mate talking about her home-life, her family, and she had grown up with a wonderful lifestyle. Lore parents who left their bairns to humans to raise only ever did so in dire circumstances, when the alternative was them being put in danger; and…and having experience with parenthood, Uilleam knew that were he to give a bairn up for adoption, he'd damn well make sure the family that took her in were the most wonderful people in the world. And he would only ever do that if he had absolutely _no_ _other_ _options_ available.

Had his mate's adoption been a carefully planned out act of pure desperation on the part of her parents?

And who was her mother?

Adopted didn't mean orphaned; her birth-parents could still be out there… Uilleam couldn't imagine ever being able to turn his back entirely on his own blood. Especially his own bairns. Little ones were precious to the Lykae; mates did _anything_ to become pregnant. And throughout the Lore, it was warned that one never got between a Lykae and his mate…or threatened his young.

If his mate's birth-parents were truly dead, he could understand, but if they weren't, he couldn't imagine they wouldn't sporadically check in on their daughter, even if only from a distance. He wondered whether this moment they were doing everything they could to rescue their child.

Uilleam sank into his cot, staring up at the top-bunk but unseeing, his chest aching, no longer anything to do with his vivisection. His heart was stuttering again. A wounded wolf always needed solitude to lick its wounds…and he had many in need of soothing.

"An Invidia plucked out her tongue," the fox-shifter remarked, and Uilleam lifted his head from the pillow, knowing his eyes were glowing ice-blue…the Invidia was soon to die.

"Why?"

"The Magister thought to question your little mate about her origins…why she's the only female vamp, yada, yada," the shifter yawned. "'Course, being raised by humans, how's she to know?"

"Aye," he growled.

"Tortured her. Used that lovely juice from the Queen of Agonies," the shifter sighed. "Been a victim of it myself. Builds with each additional dose. _Very_ nasty." Disregarding Uilleam's rage entirely—knowing he couldn't do a damn thing about _anything_ with his torque, and the space-shuttle glass, the three-foot-thick steel walls… "Anyway, of course she'd have nothing to tell him, not even knowing what she _is_, but the Invidia she shared a cell with thought it _prudent_ to remove the girl's tongue, just in case torture swayed her to tattle."

"The Invidia…which cell is she in?" Uilleam growled, prowling to the glass wall; they couldn't see very far either left or right from their own cells, but he could scent out other Loreans easily.

"Oh, you mean the one your little mate killed?" the shifter asked innocently, and he could practically hear her grinning. He stopped pacing the glass.

"Killed?"

"Aye, laddie!" the shifter chuckled richly. "I heard it was _quite_ something. There she was, pale and trembling, fresh from torture, and an Invidia attacks, gunning for blood. Next second, the humans going _fwap-fwap-fwap_ to our live-feeds were too shocked to gas the cell; apparently, whatever she is, she is indeed part vamp, but she only used her claws to attack, not her teeth. Ripped through the Invidia, pulled her head from her body—_with her bare hands_."

"Good girl," Uilleam growled, fleetingly elated that his mate was fierce. Could protect herself. _Though she should no' have to_, he added sorrowfully.

"Mm, yes, of course, this wasn't her first foray into decapitation," the shifter sniffed, and Uilleam's ears twitched, interested. _Lusty after a decapitation-happy female? Will…what're you in for with that pretty lass_?

"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.

"Well, first morning she awoke here, her cellie was an Incubus—"

"_WHAT_?"

"Mm. You can imagine how that might be distressing for a seventeen-year-old."

"_Seventeen_." Uilleam sucked in a breath, completely stunned. His jaw even went slack. More shocked by this revelation than by news of her being attacked. _Seventeen_. After a moment's shock, he shook his head to dislodge the image of her pretty lips wrapped around his shaft—"Surely you jest?"

"Nope. Heard her talking to the leopard-shifter in with her. Liked listening to her voice, _very_ decadent," the shifter mused thoughtfully. Being a fox-shifter, her hearing would be as acute as Uilleam's, probably more so, being used to the surroundings, able to tune them out for specific sounds and timbres. "Kinda lilting, you know how American Southerners can sound."

"Aye," Uilleam sighed; he had lived in New Orleans for decades, travelling between the Lykae compound there and his ancient fortress home, Kinevane, tucked into the Highlands.

The dialect of New Orleans was lazy, drawling, as rich and sultry as the bayous; his own brogue was as rich as it had been in his earliest days, when they had shouted ancient Gaelic to each other during arms-training, laughing in a decadently rich sun. The centuries had altered the climate, or perhaps his memories had been altered over time, but he remembered being blisteringly hot in the summers, cuddling up as children by the hearth with his brother and cousins while snow blanketed everything like a dream. The climate in Louisiana had reminded him of those ancient summers; and he and Munro had travelled all over the world in their endless lives, and he knew the Texan accent. Specifically, he remembered the chatty nature of Texan women, their strength and feistiness contrasting deeply-ingrained standards of femininity. A few Lykae families had moved westward from New Orleans, to Texas and New Mexico, for more space, and he and Munro had visited several of them; their bairns grew up with a mixture of the Scots' brogue and the Texan drawl—the brogue more pronounced, of course. But he remembered listening to the little lasses talk, remembered how sweet they sounded, the gentle, lilting accent.

What did his mate's voice sound like?

_Decadent_, the fox-shifter had said. But what did that mean?

And with a jolt, he remembered—an Invidia had _removed her tongue_. She could no longer speak. Females were, Uilleam knew, innately _chatty_, especially when they had little else to do—and most of the time, especially even if they _did_ have better things to do—and in this place, talking with cellmates was one of the only comforts they were afforded. She must be so frustrated with her silence.

"You said she was raised by humans?" Uilleam frowned.

"Thought she was one, until they dragged her off for an examination," the shifter remarked idly. "One wonders who her parents' enemies were. Disregarding all natural enemies of the leeches, of course. I expect she'd be a hot piece amongst the Horde…even the Forbearers would want to nab her in the hopes she'd blood one of them." Uilleam's fangs sharpened with aggression. _Mine!_ He didn't care if he sounded like a Neanderthal or King King, she was _his_. He'd suffer no leech to touch her.

"_She's—mine_!" he growled.

"Alright, alright, no need to get rabid," the shifter remarked. "So, what's your bet?"

"Bet?"

"We're taking wagers on who her mother was. Well, _what_ her mother was."

"You've no clue?"

"None. I saw her, when they moved her from her first cell. She has a _tan_, but she has fangs…she has no horns, or wings, and the leopard-shifter says her eyes have never flickered, so we can't determine if she's shifter, Valkyrie, Succubus…"

"If she was Valkyrie, she would no' be able to walk in the sun," Uilleam said, frowning thoughtfully. "I know this."

Had she been born of a vampire father and a Valkyrie mother, his mate would have been like Emma. Reliant on blood for sustenance, unable to withstand sunlight and therefore pale as cream—and Regin the Radiant would have been able to sense the presence of another Valkyrie within this compound anyway. Emmaline had told him all Valkyrie were connected through a collective power based on the electricity they fed off; they were completely independent from each other when separated, but something like sorrow, from which only a Valkyrie could _die_, could weaken the collective. And their connection meant Valkyrie could feel each other's nearness.

_Handy_, Uilleam thought, but Regin wasn't going, as the shifter had snickered at him, "rabid" over the fact another Valkyrie had been nabbed. The notoriously vicious Valkyrie had aided in his attempted escape. Lovely bit, she was, he had to admit, very curvy and strapped in black lace.

But she wasn't his mate, with those sultry, speaking eyes and that dainty fang nibbling her lip as she gazed yearningly at him, her nipples blossoming against the flimsy cotton of her top. He'd _scented_ her desire, and the reminder of it kept him sane now. The image of her nibbling her lip with that little fang had his cock twitching; even despite knowing what she was, a _leech_—a leech raised by _humans_, he reminded himself—he couldn't help his physical reaction to those sexy wee fangs.

Lachlain had bragged about his lovely queen; apparently, she liked to take his blood directly from the flesh…from _his_ _flesh_. Uilleam shuddered, tamping down the ancient memories he had struggled, the last few days, to ignore. For the first time in centuries, the wounds had reopened, and Munro wasn't here to emotionally stitch him together again. The way he always did…because only he knew. Lachlain may like his vampire queen to bite and suckle his member, drawing blood directly from him, but Uilleam…his stomach churned, bile rising as memories flooded him, and he staggered, expression stark, against the metal wall, lost to them.

* * *

He scented her desire.

And every cell in his body awoke to it, yearning to sate his mate's needs, as he had every morning; every night, he dreamed of her, taking her a thousand times, because even his nightmares couldn't compete with dreams of his mate, even a half-vampire one. That side of her nature should have repulsed and angered him; but her image in his mind was so unlike any vampire he had ever met that he strangely couldn't associate one with the other.

Lachlain's desire for Emmaline had warred with his hatred for her kind, not knowing until it was almost too late that she was not solely a leech, that she had a lineage going back to _gods_; he had scented her, seen her fangs, realised she drank blood, and that was it. Case closed; a leech. That she was part Valkyrie had come as an intense shock.

As far as Uilleam had gathered through the inmate grapevine, his mate—his _seventeen-year-old_ mate, raised by _humans_—hadn't exhibited any leech-like personality traits. No madness, no cruelty, no malice; she didn't even drink blood. Or hadn't tried to, at any rate. Apparently, she had been horrified by the sight of blood on her hands after she had slain first the Incubus that had dared touch her in his desperation, and the Invidia who had maimed her. Blood had coated her hands, but she had never licked her fingers to taste it, nor had she sunk her fangs into their jugulars, lusting for their blood, their memories, their power, as crazed Horde vampires fed.

Being raised by humans, her vampire nature—and whatever instincts her biological mother had passed on—must be completely muted. Lykae taught their bairns to hunt, to fight, it wasn't something inherently passed down through their blood, so, Uilleam guessed the vampires taught their young to drink, to trace, to use their cunning in battle. Being raised by humans, Uilleam wondered what her personality was like.

Emmaline was shy, but feisty once you got to know her; Mariketa was energetic and fun—a perfect foil for Bowe if ever there was one!—and Lucia…from what Uilleam and Munro had learned of Lucia from her niece, Emma, Lucia the Archer lacked modesty over her godlike gift, was incredibly dedicated once she made up her mind, and above all, had staggering self-control. Garreth had absolutely none. Another perfect foil. From where he sat, mulling all the couples he knew had recently been mated, fate seemed to pit opposites together.

Flirtatious Myst and stoic Nikolai.

Shy Emma and overbearing Lachlain.

Assassin Kaderin and scholar Sebastian.

Spirited Mariketa and dejected Bowe.

Vivacious Néomi and insane Conrad.

Straight-laced Holly and morally ambivalent Cadeon.

…They didn't talk about Rydstrom's mate within the clan…

Responsible Lucia and the lascivious rake Garreth.

And Uilleam.

If his perfect mate was his exact opposite, as the trend seemed to suggest…what was _he_? Who was she? What was his mate's personality? After over a millennia of knowing who he was, his latest torture, the loss of his Instinct, had him seriously considering things. He suddenly realised he didn't know himself at all.

After a thousand years, that was a terrifying realisation. A highly uncomfortable one, too; what did it mean, that he hadn't known who he was for over a thousand years? And if he couldn't understand who he was, how was he to guess what his mate was like?

Over eleven-hundred years, he had yearned for his mate, in any shape or form—he had envisioned her in _every_ shape and form, but now, her face blasting through his mind, he couldn't remember a single one.

He liked her face…an understatement. The brief glimpse he'd been gifted, she had to be the prettiest lass he had ever seen. And he yearned to discover her figure, to learn her curves, to take those elegant hands in his, to feel them on his body, to have those pretty lips lovingly close around his shaft, to feel the scent wash from her long, long hair as those beautiful curls bounced while he took her—her thighs locked around his waist; his hips thrusting up as she rode him; on her hands and knees; on her tiptoes against the wall, at his mercy to just take the pleasure he wanted so badly to give her.

Were her legs shapely? He yearned to palm the curves of her arse, to feel the fullness of her breasts, to rub his thumbs over her upturned nipples. He wanted her. He wanted to lose himself in her scent, to take her body and deliver pleasure mercilessly, to embrace the mindless lust the full-moon would bring.

He wanted to _know her name_; to hear her voice; to taste those pretty lips; and discover how soft those thick fans of lashes were; what her hair smelled like; whether she was tall and slender like a fey, or little and buxom like the Valkyrie and witches. Or had she the figure of a Lykae, brick-house built, curvaceous, of middling-height? He wanted to feel the warmth of her suntanned skin; the glossiness of her curls; he wanted to run his fingertip down the slope of her elegant nose. He wanted to kiss her thighs; and curl up in furs before the hearth in his rooms in Kinevane, stroking her hair from her face; he wanted to see her wrapped up in ruby lingerie; and bare-legged in one of his shirts; he wanted to ask her if she truly was _seventeen_ chronologically.

Lachlain had been staggered to learn his Emma had been an untouched _seventy_.

When Bowe had met Mariketa, she had been a buxom, sex-loving little _twenty-four_.

At least Mariketa had graduated from high-school.

Something like guilt churned in his stomach, warring with his lust for those pretty lips, the colour in those high cheekbones…if she truly was _seventeen_, gods but how innocent she must be!

He hoped.

The idea of her being innocent…call him _male_ but the idea of being her _first_…to teach her pleasure, and wring it relentlessly from her sun-kissed body, blacked out all thoughts of guilt and apprehension at her being less than two _decades_ old. Compared to his eleven-_hundred_.

If fate paired opposites, his was definitely a _young_ lass. He was an ancient Lykae, unapologetically in love with sex, with touch of every kind. The idea of being the first and only for his mate…excited him, even as awareness trickled into his mind, that…if he remained here when the moon became full…

The shifter who shared his mate's cell had pondered that she was on the very cusp of her immortality. Still mortal, but edging towards being infallible, the only reason she had survived her poisoning, her _vivisection_…but were Uilleam to get free, to get to her, on the night of the full moon he might…he might _hurt_ her.

He might _break_ her. She was already physically devastated; and he better than anyone knew emotional trauma was sometimes far more destructive than any physical pain. And were he to track her down, to ravish her as the moon would sway him to, were he to claim her, here, on this island, injured and afraid, separated from her family who must love and be missing her, vulnerable due to her torque and lack of training to repel his advances, that would be…he wouldn't be claiming her, as he'd yearned his entire existence to…he would be _raping_ her.

Even the thought made his blood run icy-cold.

The only benefit, then, of being here, was that his strength was diminished by this torque. And she was protected by the space-shuttle glass, three-feet-thick steel walls, both from enemies and from _him_.

The idea of claiming her, though… Eleven-hundred years, he had waited—admittedly, screwing any female who followed the curl of his finger in invitation in the meantime; growing up in a large and boisterous family, a prince to the royal seat of a rambunctious, sex-loving race that revered strength, he had also grown up being coveted as incomparably handsome (unless you counted Munro, exact doubles of each other, inseparable their entire lives) and just the curl of his lips had females begging for his touch. The Lykae were an incurably lusty race, physical to a fault and aggressive in bed, and he had found many a female loved to be dominated and overpowered in the bedchamber. He knew that his muscles made them wild; his battle-scarred fingers were good for more than just holding his enemies while he bit their throats out.

He _loved_ women. Loved everything about them: their scents; their texture; their warmth; the way they nibbled their lips and moaned or cried out, chests thrusting out, begging for his touch—or his lips; he loved the way their bodies were soft, supple and warm, giving, he loved their laughter; the crinkle at the corner of their eyes when they smiled; he _loved_ their smiles; he loved bringing them to blush with pleasure and pride with his flirting and compliments; and he loved bringing them to orgasm, their faces flushing as their fingers—or claws—bit into his muscles, writhing beneath him—or above him—but…he had never been _in_ _love_.

His love was reserved for his mate.

And he had found her. He had found her in a sultry-eyed lass with sunburned cheekbones, great fans of eyelashes, beautiful lips made to wrap around his cock, heavy curls to her waist, tanned legs and perky little nipples made for him to suckle.

A seventeen-year-old halfling lass who woke him by the hour every night with the scent of her growing desire as she dreamed—futile in this place, never easing, constantly building, his own desire for her, to feel those elegant fingers over his cock, to have those pretty lips brush against his heated skin…

Gods, he wanted to _touch _her.

His mate.

His _Bethany_.

* * *

**A.N.**: If anybody's interested, I made a board on Pinterest for Immortals After Dark—at least, the actors/models etc who inspired my imagination with different characters. _pinterest mellowukgal/immortals-after-dark/_ is the link (stitch it back together first!) if you want a peek. The only one I don't have pins for is Bethany. Lana Del Rey inspired her, not _exactly_ like her, but her off-the-shoulder top and gorgeous curly hair in her 'Ride' video.


	4. Jailbreak

**A.N.**: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, or checked this story out but _didn't bother_ to review. *Clears throat pointedly. This is, of course, Uilleam MacRieve's story, and I've recently re-read _Lothaire_, and decided that I love the idea of Thad and Ellie's friendship, and want to expand on it, and so, this story will also feature Ellie Ann Peirce, as well as tie in with my Lords of the Underworld story, _Back From the Rabbit-Hole_, featuring unbending, tattooed Aeron and my soon-to-be-introduced-in-_this_-story character Serafina.

* * *

**Uilleam**

_04_

_Jailbreak_

* * *

As she had feared, one sight of that deliciously burnished male, the _Lykae_, had her constantly dreaming about him. Her dreams, already bringing her to the verge of coming _before_ she had seen him, now made her maddened with irrepressible lust she had no hope of quenching; her dreams were vivid, full of that male with his enormous shoulders, sun-burnished hair, rakishly handsome face and huge hands, laughter-lines tanned forever at the corners of his vivid golden eyes, exquisite lips and muscled thighs wrapped in worn dark denim.

With nothing to do but sign with Jazira, do their yoga stretches, keep an eye on the debilitated Paris and continue teaching her how to spar, Bethany fell victim to her daydreams. She had never been a boy-crazed, trembling bundle of lust; she had liked looking at some of the boys in her class, enjoyed watching the boys during football practice, had enjoyed peeking at glimpses of Ray's six-pack, but nothing like this soul-searing, possessive lust had ever riddled her body before. She figured the humans had put something into the poison-gas they piped into the cells any time one of the inmates did something naughty, because she was changing.

She woke on the verge of coming numerous times during the night, aching with emptiness, slick and throbbing, unbearably hot, yearning for the enormous hands of that Lykae, and those long, long fingers, the press of his firm lips, the feel of his muscles under her fingers, his heat and weight pressing on her, dominating her…she dreamed of him. And she woke in a trembling, dazed ball, thighs clenched together, sometimes moaning, aching and desperate for something she had never had, yet could imagine clearly—and in a bunch of different positions.

Boys had never blatantly been attracted to her; she was too _tall_. Too quiet. Too related to utterly protective golden-boy Thad for any of his buddies to risk a glower and a punch-up from her sweet superhero by asking her out. Ray had liked that she was so tall, he didn't get a crick in his neck when he bent to kiss her, but even when she had been with Ray, they had casually dated for a month, going out maybe three times a week, to the movies, bonfires, parties, and the first time they had gone parking they had both been shy of each other. She hadn't felt this great hot aching between her thighs, throbbing and needy, yearning to be filled and enflamed, to feel his hands on her heavy breasts as her nipples throbbed—something she felt every other _minute_ for that Lykae she hadn't even ever spoken to, seen only _twice_.

Jazira called it overstimulation, she remembered, and Bethany was willing to bet she was falling victim to it. She just hoped it didn't get worse. Jazira had said it was her body's way of changing and acclimating to immortality, with _everything_ heightened; senses, emotions, physical desires, instincts. She had promised Bethany would get used to it, that's what overstimulation meant; a brief period of completely unbearable lust, followed by a lifetime of super-charged emotions and physical instincts. It all meant that Bethany was fast approaching her immortality, something that usually occurred in Lorean females from late-teens to mid-to-late twenties; or, the age at which the individual would be best suited to survive eternity. With her height and her mature figure, Jazira guessed that Bethany was going through overstimulation now because, physically, she already _looked_ like she was in her twenties. Especially now, Jazira said, that her eyes had been opened to pain most people would never believe could be endured.

She said that that experience, so early in her life, would give Bethany, already level-headed and responsible, a maturity that took some Loreans decades to develop. Her Gram used to say Bethany and Thad were the exception, that very few kids their age appreciated as much as they did or helped out around the house the way they did, uncomplaining, not expecting a huge increase in their allowances, actively _taking_ _care_ of their mother and grandmother, not just allowing them to pick up all the slack. Thad was easygoing; their mother, a happy social-butterfly; Gram, totally eccentric. Bethany, she was the introspective one, artistic but not a dreamer, or romantic that she could tell; she was adventurous when comfortable amongst lifelong friends, daring when coaxed and challenged by her daredevil best-friend, but she was the one who'd have one beer at parties, then put on a big platter of cheese-fries for the others to soak up booze before they were all due to stagger home. She had been a mellowing influence on her best-friend, Melanie, and even on her own charismatic mother.

Gram used to fear Bethany didn't let herself take enough chances, and _live_. But then, Gram was a liquor-slinging card-shark seamstress who'd lied about her age and worked as a nurse during World War Two, stationed in Hawaii, Singapore and Malaya, had been taught needlecraft, beadwork and clothes-making since she was old enough not to poke her eyes out with a needle, went through an unrepentant hippie phase as part of her first midlife crisis, and still loved lighting up in the backyard with a Long Island iced-tea, a dirty novel, her backgammon board and the radio on so she could phone in and voice her disgust over the opinions of whoever was presenting the day's news topic.

Thinking of her Gram, and of her mother, and especially _Thad_, made her chest ache, in a way that had nothing to do with the staples. So she didn't indulge in the luxury of thinking about them.

Instead, she watched Jazira's hands as they signed about the different creatures housed in this Lore Superdome. Unerringly, today Jazira chose to teach her about _Lykae_. Perhaps because Bethany had once again woken on the verge of coming; her sexual frustration was giving Paris tiny bursts of energy, which helped him but which also, Jazira said, made the Lykae go _mad_, howling for her. For _Bethany_.

Apparently, the Lykae had supernaturally heightened senses—he could probably scent how _frustrated_ she was.

The Lykae were the physically strongest species in the entire Lore. And they were wolfish in every sense of the word. Tricksy, wily, worshipping touch, food and _especially_ sex. Each Lykae was only ever given one mate in an eternity, the female alone who could give them contentment, and for whom each Lykae spent his life searching. Like wolves, Lykae loved to hunt, to _run_, and she couldn't imagine what it felt like for the Lykae to be caged, unable to stretch his long legs, unable to _run_, the torque that had shone against his tanned skin tampering strength he had probably been used to for hundreds of years. Lykae were _alphas_.

Her twin-brother was star quarterback for the Varsity team; and because he dragged her to all the team's parties, Bethany knew how much testosterone alpha-males suffered from…and what they were like when they couldn't blow off steam.

And this particular alpha-male, Uilleam MacRieve, the male Jazira had come to describe with complete amusement as _Bethany's_, was a Lykae _royal_. His cousins were king and prince of the Lykae. It had been big news amongst the Loreans who had been here for years that King Lachlain of the Lykae clan had escaped the catacombs—a subterranean torture chamber beneath Paris housing everlasting _fire_. His brother, Garreth, nicknamed the Dark Prince—the allusion to Lucifer intentional—had reluctantly assumed kingship in his brother's absence, but had never believed in his soul that his brother, the last member of his immediate family left after centuries of wars with the Horde and the _Accession_, was dead.

Uilleam MacRieve was cousin to those brothers, a royal himself, and _he had a twin_. A male that handsome had an identical twin-brother? Bethany could only imagine how successful they were with the ladies. The first time she had seen him, he had been raw masculinity, so charged with sexual energy she had wanted to claw through the glass to jump him. She wondered how many other females had felt that way about him.

Jazira said he was _old_.

Bethany winced, watching the guards drag their new prisoner past.

If Uilleam MacRieve was the epitome of _earthy_ masculinity, Malkom Slaine was a contradiction of nature.

He had arrived at the compound a week after the witch nicknamed Carrow the Incarcerated had been sent to a hellish plane called Oblivion to seduce him into a trap, so the Order could examine him. Bethany had seen Malkom Slaine when he had been dragged into his cell down the ward; he, like many of the males here, was panty-dropping gorgeous, packed with muscle, a chiselled blonde with _horns_ she had the strangest urge to lick, vivid blue eyes that flickered black with emotion, and a rakish cast to his once-broken nose.

He was what Jazira and the others colloquially dubbed a "vemon", a _Scârbă_, supposedly true myths. Malkom Slaine was apparently a vampire turned from a _demon_, and it made him the strongest creature in the Lore. But it also made him…an abomination.

Jazira explained to Bethany basic biology in terms of the Lore: when a vampire and a demoness had a child, nature measured out the kinks, as it were. A Scârbă was _created_, the inherited traits of the demon overridden by foreign impulses from the turning. The instincts warred against each other. But Bethany had seen his eyes had been black with emotion, not the fiery red of fallen Horde vampires. Whispers up and down the ward about the _vemon_ said he had once led armies against an invasion of Horde vampires, and eventually assassinated the vampire Viceroy in such a gruesome manner as to make all other "leeches" flee from the hell-plane, giving the Trothan demons who lived there their freedom for the first time in centuries. And then he had been hunted down like an animal.

_How's that for gratitude_, Bethany thought, wincing again as the male's roars rumbled through the very foundations, jolting her insides, making Jazira pace with wariness and frustration.

After days, the vemon had fallen silent.

The fox-shifter down the ward whispered, having heard the conversations of the witch Carrow and her cellmate Melanthe, the Queen of Persuasions; a seven-year-old girl, Carrow's cousin Ruby, had been orphaned _to convince Carrow to bait Malkom_. This Order had orphaned a little girl to persuade one of their captives to ensnare yet another immortal to be tortured and experimented on.

This wasn't a place for children. Only ten years older than the little girl, Bethany sympathised with her from afar; she hadn't been much younger than the little witch when her own father had died. But he had died in an accident; he hadn't been murdered in front of her, his head chopped off. Apparently, the little witchling had tortured and killed _twenty_ armed soldiers before her capture.

_Good girl_, Bethany thought; for orphaning her, these humans deserved everything they had coming to them.

Jazira also heard that the witch Carrow might have…maybe…just a teensy bit…fallen for the vemon Malkom Slaine. Bethany had seen him. She could see it. Jazira stared, eyebrows raised, as she signed that the vemon was _very_ handsome.

Jazira replied, _You have a very open mind, halfling_.

_That's me, unprejudiced_, she signed back.

Jazira relayed the fox-shifter's whisper that Lothaire the Enemy of Old had tried to coax the vemon into an alliance, said he knew they were not long to be in this prison, and they could help each other out to escape.

Whether it was the ravings of the lunatic everyone in the Lore believed ancient and half-insane Lothaire was, or whether he spoke the truth, this perked Jazira's interest, and she began plotting her course of action should they get the opportunity get the hell out of dodge.

Bethany hadn't even thought about escape.

She had believed this was purgatory. She believed she deserved to be there. That was it.

Why did Uilleam MacRieve's face flash through her mind as she considered the possibilities of getting out of this cell?

And how were they going to cart Paris out of this place without getting killed themselves? The incubus hadn't fed in _weeks_. Bethany glanced at him, biting her lip, compassion filling her at the sight of the emaciated, once-gorgeous male. Jazira shrugged, signing, _I'll give him a good seeing to_.

Bethany snorted, rolling her eyes, and signed, pointing to the camera in the ceiling, _You want to make home-movies for the humans_?

_They won't live long enough to enjoy the video_, Jazira shrugged.

_Provided Lothaire's right, and we _are_ about to bust this joint_, Bethany signed, sighing heavily.

That night, thunder and lightning shook the prison. Bethany could feel it in her bones, electricity charging the air the way it did before a huge storm. In all her weeks here, she had never been so wary, freaked out.

The glowing Valkyrie, incomparably lovely and vivacious, had been taken to Dr Dixon today; Bethany had seen her several times before, led off by Vincente to see the Magister, Chase. The first time, she had been tortured with the Queen of Agonies' poison. The second time, she had gone to Chase sans bra. _Very odd..._

Jazira had told her that the Valkyrie were a vicious race of warmongering females with capricious personalities and warped senses of humour, and that they gave off lightning with strong emotion. And from experience, Bethany knew the emotions Regin would be feeling during her vivisection would be enough to power a few nuclear bombs with her electrical energy.

It was eerie, feeling the thunder and lightning rock the entire building as nothing yet had; she had never felt so unnerved, and Jazira came to sit beside her, thighs touching, an arm curled around Bethany's shoulders comfortingly. Every rock of thunder, every crackle of lightning Bethany felt in her marrow was a reminder of what the Valkyrie was enduring, a reminder of what _Bethany_ had endured.

Hours later, the thunder rumbled to silence, the lightning no longer shaking the building, and the Valkyrie Regin, now no longer glowing like the sun but bloodless, her chest stapled like a zipper, was being hauled past their cell. She was bloodless, coughing blood, her eyes glazed, unseeing, and Bethany's own vivisection incisions ached in sympathy for the Valkyrie's pain.

The whispers were that Regin had been Chase's female—in another life. A Viking berserker named Aidan, reincarnated through the centuries, had claimed her as his own, seeking the glowing Valkyrie…this time, he had become embodied in Declan Chase, the Magister, aka the Blademan.

And he had ordered her vivisected.

How Bethany hoped he suffered for it. It was not like her to wish pain upon anyone…but Chase had been in the surgical theatre when Dixon had cut _her _up; as the sole female vampire known to the Order, she had been of special interest. So much so, the Commander of the Order himself had come to the island to watch her examination. He and Chase had watched, one scientifically curious but clinically detached, the other, high and icy; only Vincente had shown any reservation about her torture, though he had hidden it from everyone but her. It was he who had reached out to turn her head to prevent her choking on her own blood as it pooled in her mouth. And he had gently carried her back to her cell in his arms as she whimpered, his warmth chasing away the tiniest fraction of pain.

Bile rose, and Bethany rested her head back, closing her eyes, taking measured breaths, _In…out… In…out. Don't throw up on Jazira's cute boots_. She focused on them, rather than the lingering lightning, the sympathy pains echoing in her chest at the remembered horror of her own vivisection, her eyes burning for the Valkyrie. Fuchsia suede ankle-boots with a staggering stiletto-heel and a fun little tassel, embellishments in glittery pink snakeskin and fuchsia wood beads. The shifter was short and curvaceous, and her feet were dainty, her boots so little and sweet; Bethany envied her them.

Jazira said she was going to _burn_ her clothes, including the cute fuchsia ankle-boots, as soon as she made her departure from this "godsforsaken Lore Superdome". Bethany, too, would readily put her top and cut-offs on a pyre, but her boots? Ancient silvery-grey snakeskin cowboy boots, with map-patterned silk lining? They had been her daddy's in high-school, and they fit her perfectly. She and Thad often alternated between who wore them, but he knew she had so much difficulty finding shoes—clothing in general—that fit her tall frame, that he readily let her covet the boots.

To bed, and she dreamed of heat-lightning over the lake as she and Thad knocked back beers and shared peanuts and a few hands of poker, reclined in little folding chairs in the bed of their dad's old truck, laughing softly as Patsy Cline played on the radio and the thunder rumbled… It was a memory, and the first time she had dreamed of her brother since being abducted here. But, as usual, she woke to dreams of Uilleam MacRieve doing things to her she could barely imagine.

_Damn Lykae_.

She just wanted _one taste_. She wanted to know what it'd feel like to be filled so completely by him, to feel his rapturous heat, surrounded by his strength and his scent, the feel of his lips against her skin. Thoughts of heat-lightning and sultry summer evenings, the beds of trucks and Uilleam MacRieve resonated through her dreams, and once more she awoke desperate for his touch, wondering what it'd feel like, yearning for his fingers, his…his _cock_. She shivered, _empty_, and bit back a moan of frustration.

That day, the vemon Malkom Slaine was dragged off to a _session_ with the Magister…hours later, he was dragged back past their cell, blood pouring from his nose, ears and mouth, eyes glazed, subdued by heavily-armed human guards. But he had not been vivisected; whatever he had endured seemed to be just as bad, though, Bethany thought, wincing as the huge blonde male was dragged past, leaving Jazira all but in heat as she thrummed with futile sexual lust. She eyed Paris; they both did. Emaciated from sexual hunger, while the two of them were starving for release.

At least Jazira knew how, teasing she hadn't "rubbed one out" in months. If her dreams continued, Bethany thought she might just snap, mentally declare, _Fuck it_! and climb on to ride Paris like a lazy horse.

_Or you could hold out for that Lykae_, a little voice whispered. Jazira had told her the Lykae had been asking other inmates about _her_, Bethany, through the grapevine. And she teased that Bethany might be his _mate_.

Just as everyone had been whispering that Carrow Graie was Malkom Slaine's mate—_and_ his vampire Bride. Except, apparently, Carrow had gotten to spend and entire week out in his world, completely alone with the heartrendingly handsome blonde male. She had gotten to enjoy every single thing about him. And from what Jazira tittered like a coy schoolgirl, there was a _lot_ to enjoy when it came to Malkom Slaine.

Demons, Jazira had told her, were notoriously hung; and so were Lykae.

_Stop thinkin' about it, stop thinkin' about it, you'll just—damn it!_ She clenched her thighs together, grimacing with annoyance as lust flared, the image of the shirtless Lykae painstakingly unzipping his jeans with a heart-stopping grin making her shiver, nipples throbbing. She had to get out of here. She would _die_ needing something male, _anything_, between her thighs—and considering her first thought at waking in this place…she had come full-circle.

She suddenly sat bolt upright, a shiver dancing through her body as a malevolence fell oppressively over everything. She couldn't hear anything, but she felt it, in her marrow…something powerful, something _evil_, was coming. She cast a wide-eyed glance at Jazira, whose expression mirrored hers; the shifter bit her lip with a fang, eyed the glass, Paris, the ceiling, then drew her shoulders back, muttered that, "_Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team_", and shimmied out of her little black silk panties, unzipping Paris' jeans before climbing on top of him.

Bethany gaped, _Couldn't wait till I'd turned around?_ She spun, shivering, nipples pearling almost painfully as she nibbled her lower-lip with a razor-sharp fang…even her fangs were aching for something to sink into. A lip, Uilleam MacRieve's delicious collarbone or bicep; her mouth watered as she leaned an arm against the wall, ankles crossed, arms folded lightly over her waist, envious of Jazira for "offering herself up" to Paris "for strength". Big sacrifice. The male was _stunning,_ pearly skin and multihued hair, dazzling sapphire eyes ringed with navy, lush lips almost too pretty for a man.

And, thank God, Bethany couldn't hear their moans, the slap of slick flesh…

That malevolence grew, and just when she thought the humans might trigger the poison-gas to stop Paris and Jazira going at it—she thought she felt the clang and scrape of metal as—she shouldn't have glanced back; Paris had regained strength with every measured glide of Jazira's hips, now had his large hands splayed on her thighs, meeting her every glide with a deep thrust of his hips upwards, twisting at the last second, Jazira's skirt concealing the act itself… _Turn away_, she thought, shivering, and glanced back into the corridor, shivering, biting her lip, glancing up as that eeriness pressed on her, the feeling of power upping a notch as she shivered once more, no longer from lust but from _fear_.

What the hell was going on? The lights flickered, the way they had during Regin the Radiant's vivisection. But during her examination no feeling of pure, unadulterated _evil_ had accompanied the lightning. This was different. Malevolent. Evil.

She imagined this was how Frodo and Sam felt in Mordor…or how the D.A. had felt in the Department of Mysteries just before Lucius and Bellatrix revealed themselves. And yes, she had read _Lord of the Rings_ and was an unabashed Potterwhore.

The scrape of metal grated through the floor, through her bones, as Jazira and Paris went at it in their bunk, getting more and more brutal in their thrusts and grinding; Bethany exhaled and shivered, fanning herself as she flushed hotly. The lights wavered again then died completely. Bethany frowned, peeking as far as she could up and down the ward. A place as secure and apparently inescapable as this, she would have expected backup-generators, emergency lights—at least, emergency protocols in case of mass outbreak. The torque sat heavily at the base of her throat, and Bethany remembered—they all wore inherent safety-precautions. Not that she could do anything without hers, anyway; she had no idea what she _was_, only knew vampires drank blood; the only weapon she'd ever wielded was a baseball bat. She was damn good with one, too, but she'd never hit anyone with one.

What the hell was going on?

Total darkness embraced her. She blinked, peering into the blackness, surprised when she could see movement inside the cells, figures familiar to her from constant observation; frowning, she jumped when she noticed something—some_one_—moving along the corridor. And she could see almost every detail… Frowning in confusion, she eyed the figure limping past.

They were human in form, but looked like something from _The Mummy_, a living corpse rotted and draped in drenched gauze, half her face—_her_? a gold breastplate shone over an incongruously preserved rack—appeared eaten away, and the being was missing an eye. A gold crown perched atop her misshapen head. Making herself as small as she could, Bethany ducked her head, cheeks flaming, when she felt that eye lance onto her; the being had probably felt her staring. She chanced a glance up, flushing; the being had their single eye—an incomparably lovely olive (Bethany was staggered she could determine the lovely shade of her eye as much as she could the gold flakes that chaffed from the body at their every movement, in _total darkness_)—trained on Bethany, head canted curiously.

Bethany lowered her gaze, blushing hotly, always uncomfortable with lingering attention in a way her twin would've just grinned out. _Thad_…

There were…_things_ lolloping around the figure, clawed, fanged creatures dressed in…leather? No. It looked…skin-hued. As in…sentient-Lorean-hued. Red eyes glowed in the dark, but the monsters Jazira had described as cunning and uncontrollable, Wendigos, seemed to be commanded by the powerful entity, snapping at her heels like trained dogs.

"_RIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG!_" The sudden shriek made Bethany jump out of her skin—that she could _hear it_. Even with her obliterated hearing, she could feel that scream bone-deep…_terrifying_.

The being moved on, but not before Bethany realised…the evil creatures in cells surrounding her…their torques were falling to the floor. Red-eyed vampires, winged demons, Invidia, a centaur, they were all rolling their necks with relief as their natural powers were released from whatever mystical hold the torques had on them. Bethany's remained in place, she realised sorrowfully.

Jazira said Loreans worshipped strength; any sign of weakness in one Lorean made others call open-season. This Lorean Superdome was about to become a gladiatorial bloodbath…and all the good guys were powerless.

_Shit_, she thought, chewing her lower-lip.

She perched on the edge of her cot, avoiding looking at Paris and Jazira still going strong, and tugged her boots on. First time she'd worn them in months. No reason to, in this place. But if things hit the fan, she'd need them to run. One good thing about not knowing she was a possibly-very-powerful Lorean halfling? She had grown up thinking she was human, with _human_ limitations. So she'd be going about things as if being powerless was normal, while the Vertas would be unused to their diminished power.

She'd never believed her baseball training would come in handy in life-and-death situations, the way bare-knuckle fighting and Krav Maga would, but she knew how to _run_, and Jazira's first lesson when starting to teach her to spar? If she was outnumbered, never be afraid to back down and _run_. Count their numbers first, though, in case they decided to split up and pursue her.

When the scraping became constant, joined by a rumbling that emanated from beneath her feet the way an earthquake would feel, Bethany glanced over at Jazira and Paris—the shifter was tugging her panties on, looking flushed and energised, satisfaction emanating from her for the first time since Bethany had met her; Paris looked devastatingly handsome, zipping his jeans and grinning lazily with eyelids at half-mast, the picture of masculine contentment. And he was _huge_; Jazira must have some kind of magic honey-pot, because he towered, every muscle bulging, pumped as if he'd come straight from the gym, sexually sated, primed for battle.

It wasn't them making the floor tremble; it _definitely_ wasn't them causing the ground to fissure around a stone mass rising from deep within the earth. Their lovin' definitely wasn't causing the three-foot-thick steel dividing walls to _crumple_ like soggy cardboard.

Jazira tapped Bethany's arm frantically, and she glanced at the shifter. Jazira quickly signed, _We need to find weapons. With these torques on we're sitting-ducks_.

Bethany remembered her first _interview_ with the Magister. _Chase's office_, she signed. _He'd have weapons stashed in case something like this happened_.

_Good call—there's a storage-room next-door to his office with all our junk, too_, Jazira signed, _I remembered from _my _sessions with the Magister. My swords will be in there_.

Paris grabbed Bethany around the waist before she could react, hauling her and Jazira to the floor, covering them both with his weight, pinning them just as the glass—made for _space_-_shuttles_—fractured and exploded at the pressure of the crumpling dividing walls…Bethany tensed, pain radiating through her torso from her vivisection at the movement, the staples screaming in protest, tugging her skin, as glass shattered overhead; she could feel shards of it caught in her hair. Paris clutched her arm, helping her off the floor, staggering to realise that the entire structure was shifting beneath her feet.

Jazira picked up a large chunk of glass with a lethal edge, as Paris leapt out of their cell to attack a horned male—without a torque—carrying off a screaming, flailing female with delicately-pointed ears. His life-blood being women, Paris went _crazy_ at the sight of powerless females being carted off by enormous males.

Jazira's ears twitched as a group of the human guards rushed their cell; she may not be leopard-fast, but Jazira still had her claws; inches-long lethal fangs Bethany had only ever seen on Attenborough shows shone brightly in the fires that emanated down the ward, as Jazira tore the guards' throats out, ripping jugulars with her claws—tugging on their ankles, Bethany pulled the bodies into the cell, squatting to quickly pluck a shotgun, spare shells and a couple _grenades_ from their bodies. On a second thought at the sight of their bullet-proof vests, feeling a tear to the still-healing incision down the centre of her torso, she remembered the baby-witch somewhere in this ward, and she quickly whipped the bullet-proof vests from two of the fallen guards, slipping one on while Jazira took point, keeping immortal males with their torques removed back, shooting them in the face with the guards' semi-automatics.

Pulling the Velcro tight, the vest pinned her breasts in place as a tight sports-bra would, kept everything deliciously close, tight like a bandage, and Bethany tugged one of the guard's jackets on, pocketing the grenades, picking up the shotgun, reloading it, pocketing extra shells, swallowed, and…and stepped straight into Hell.

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**A.N.**: Things get interesting from here on out! Well, I think they do. Let me know what _you_ think, and by that I mean _REVIEW_. Um, please.


	5. A Bloodbath

**A.N.**: Thank you to everyone who's reviewed! Especially _akashichin_ and _kittylikesWhitlock_; your reviews had me swooning with delight, so thank you! I'm sure I'm not the only one who adores the breakout scenes in _Demon from the Dark _and _Dreams of a Dark Warrior_. And here's where things…_alter_ from canon. Mostly because I _loathe_ the Sorceri: oversize egos and undersize skirts. I've decided they all need a good ass-whoopin' to knock them down a rung or ten.

* * *

**Uilleam**

_05_

_A Bloodbath_

* * *

Chaos reigned. Smoke oozed along the black corridor, curling in the darkest shadows where humans and torque-bound females were dragged for sex…and…_feeding_. Red-eyed vampires feasted after so long without fresh blood; horned demons and Pravus shifters picked out their powerless Vertas enemies; females fled over the unstable ground; the fires illuminated ram-headed serpent creatures and spider-like monsters with whip-like antennae and parasitic growths…_feasting_. Canisters of poison gas skittered across the uneven floor as rumbles shook through Bethany's legs; glass glinted, catching the unwary as they stumbled with each tremor of the earth, the guards' weapons littered the floor, bent out of shape, useless; she could scent fresh blood, and the unfamiliar but recognisable scent of burning flesh grew as the flames leapt at one end of the ward.

They got separated.

Too dark, too much to take in, relying on her sight and the prickling feeling in her spine, her height was an advantage over the truly monstrous creatures, and the much littler Lore females, and she saw that despite the sitting duck Vertas allies, the Pravus soldiers stalked the humans, eliminating them in gruesome ways that made Freddy and Jason look like pussies. Glass continued to shatter like small landmines, unleashing more prisoners, ash smouldered in the air as smoke irritated her eyes…a _mountain_ was rising within the ward. A metal-bedecked female with a short hairstyle seemed to be raising the rock with her glowing palms; her companion, with onyx locks braided in with riotous scarlet, was incinerating anybody who approached, her hands glowing _balls of_ _flame_.

She just spied Jazira through the smoke, tangling with crocodilae shifters without their torques—but she was _winning_, the vicious female! Paris…was gone, seeking out someone he had sensed in the chaos. Bethany didn't know _what_ to do… _No! Chase's office. Weapons. Supplies. Escape… Survive_. _Live_.

Chase's office was in another ward; Bethany could see winged demons, Volar demons, battering the multi-tonne bulkhead separating this compromised ward from the research one, the one where the surgical theatre was located…where _Dixon_ was. The demons would get to her first, she realised, but Bethany didn't care. She didn't want to mete out revenge; she wanted to get out of here alive, _unaltered_…at least, no more than she already was. That other ward would also have a store for the soldiers who went out on raids, a place they'd refill their packs before they went on merry jaunts orphaning children and slaying Gotohs. There would be clothing, food, blankets…_soap_.

Her course was set. Find Chase's office, weapon up with something she could actually use and not get spanked, grab as many supplies as she could carry, possibly find that little witch-baby and get this spare bullet-proof vest on her. It wasn't much, certainly wouldn't be anything against shifters' claws or demon fangs, but it'd prevent her getting accidentally shot by any surviving guards.

She picked her way over the uneven floor, dodging out of the way of skirmishes going on between the "dregs" of the Lore, as Jazira dubbed viper-eyed, scaled, fork-tongued Lorean creatures with crocodile fangs and plated skin, antennae and _tails_; her skin crawled as she glimpsed demons sharing humans—female civilians from the other ward _and_ male soldiers, they didn't seem to care—for sex, red-eyed vampires taking their blood at the same time, monsters feasting on the remains, sometimes the guards still writhing, clinging to life despite their broken bodies. Her boots soon became gritty with blood and ash, the remnants of immolated soldiers. Several guards seemed to have had their heads crushed like watermelons by great boulders, their bodies now ripped apart by glowing ghouls the Pravus and Vertas alike were quick to eliminate, or risk infection.

She crept through the chaos as stealthily as she could, ducking out of the way of an enormous _centaur_—nothing like Disney had drawn them in _Fantasia_!—as he galloped up and down the corridor, brandishing twin swords. Swords! Someone had breached the other ward and discovered the storage-room Jazira had mentioned.

The darkness alleviated in the other ward, the scientific hub of the facility, chemical glow-sticks illuminating carnage. Peter Jackson would've taken inspiration for his Orc scenes in this mess; it was difficult to climb over dismembered bodies, and she was sure if she'd had her hearing, she might have heard whimpers of fear and pain, certainly screams as she watched the human females being raped by winged Volar demons and amphibious shifters; the only good thing about a red-eyed vampire was their bodies seized at the height of their physical strength, only coming to life when their Bride blooded them, allowing them sexual function. But she still saw their glowing eyes as they ravaged humans, drinking them to the quick.

She found the PX store; and for the first time in her life, aimed a gun, not to shoot at empty beer-cans, but to hurt another living being. They wore no torque; they were an enemy. It was as simple as that. Bethany didn't care if she was part-vampire; _she_ knew she wasn't evil. But she wanted to go _home_.

She aimed the shotgun, and buckshot obliterated the horned head of a demon. As the gun kicked, making her wince, the demon's immense body dropped, and she quickly reloaded before hopping over the mess of limbs, crumpled weapons, gas-canisters and a pair of broken spectacles. She grabbed a pack, stuffing it full of everything she could think of as useful—god love her Survival training with Scouts. She packed as much of that ration-pack army-style food as she thought she could carry, as well as nutrient-restoring gel-packs and drinks, a six-pack of beer, spare clothing—_rocking the Tacticool like Lara Croft!_—a sewing-kit, wet-wipes, toiletries, one of those Swiss army-knives, emergency-blankets and a full First Aid kit, securing a rolled-up sleeping-bag and a cooking-pot to the pack before lifting it—with surprising ease, making herself stop, a little stunned at what should have been quite a hefty struggle for her to lift—and strapping it tight over her shoulders, buckling straps across her chest.

_Sorry_, she wanted to say to the demon she had decapitated by buckshot, but she picked up her shotgun and crept toward Chase's office… She hadn't seen any sign of the Magister…

Her remaining senses were on high-alert, assessing the Magister's office-door ripped off its hinges, lifting her nose to scent the fresh blood on the air…not surprising, really; the scent of gunpowder mingled with ash, the smoke irritating her eyes until they watered, forcing her to wipe them constantly on the sleeve of her jacket, but she picked around smaller fights, slipping on the uneven, buckling floor several times, her bare legs coating with blood—others'; some of her own when she grazed her shin badly against a rising rock—jumping when an earthquake dislodged a burning rafter from above, destroying an entire lab, chemicals starting to burn, licking dead flesh and the living monsters feeding on it.

She edged into the Magister's office at last, the place he had first interrogated her about being the only female vampire. He had _windows_—her first sight of the outside world in _months_; outside, the weather mirrored the violence within, a storm raging such as she only ever saw during hurricane-season at home. After weeks of blistering sunshine, the night of the accident, a freak shower had hit her by surprise…the rain hadn't been this violent, though, but thick and sudden… She batted down the memory; _Can't get lost in that now_… But the scent of blood reminded her.

The office was empty…but she scented the air, smelled something almost…_sweet_…and followed it to a panel-door slightly ajar, peeking her head inside warily. Nothing blew her head off, nothing jumped for her throat…fresh blood, she could _taste_ the blood, the terror, a hundred other unfamiliar scents bombarding her as she stepped down a small set of stairs into the storage-facility Jazira had once seen. Metal shelves lined the walls, crates were stacked up, the ceiling was bowed and flaming rafters speared the ruptured floor. Dark blood glinted on the cement, and Bethany skulked warily around shelving-units in disarray, obviously picked over by other escaped inmates seeking their weapons and effects…she wondered fleetingly whether she had been dragged here with anything of _hers_. At the hospital, she vaguely remembered clutching her duffel, her purse, as she had sobbed.

She spied a little girl, and stopped, stunned. It was true. The humans had indeed brought a seven-year-old girl to this hell. She was a very pretty girl, wearing a black tutu, baby combat-boots and a determined mien, and her green eyes glittered when she spied Bethany. The little girl tugged on the sleeve of a tall, black-haired woman—who looked so like the little girl, they could have been mother and child. A second woman, this one also with black hair but wearing a cobalt mask, was leaning over _Fegley_.

When the first woman turned to glare at Bethany, she almost dropped her shotgun in her haste to put her hands up, palms out. She watched the woman's lips. _Who are you_?

_Bethany_, she signed. She peered past the woman, eyeing Fegley, satisfied his arm was nearly severed from his body, _painfully_. The woman snapped her fingers in front of Bethany's face, frowning, her eyes glittering dangerously. Bethany watched her lips, squinting because her eyes were smarting from the smoke.

_What do you want_?

Bethany shrugged awkwardly; to help? To get the hell out of here in one piece? To make sure the little girl didn't see anybody getting _raped_ or eaten, the way her mind would be plagued with nightmares the rest of her soon-to-be-eternal life?

She nibbled her lower-lip, then held the bullet-proof vest, and a relatively-clean helmet she had snagged, to the woman, looking pointedly at the little girl. The woman frowned, then her eyes went wide and she swept the vest and helmet from Bethany's hands, swiftly dressing the little girl in the vest, strapping the Velcro as tight as it would go, making the little girl smile as she buckled the helmet under her little dimpled chin. In her little black tutu, combat-boots and the new helmet and bullet-proof vest, the little girl looked ready to hitch up her pants and stride into battle, and Bethany thought sorrowfully of her lost innocence.

Bethany tugged the army-knife from the pocket of her jacket, where she'd stashed it for easy access (along with her grenades) and eyed Fegley, the other woman—a Sorceri, from the look of her claw-tipped gloves and cobalt mask—considering his almost-lopped-off arm thoughtfully. They couldn't get to his thumb without lying flat on the floor.

The first woman sent Bethany a tiny, appreciative smile, the little girl giving her a blazing grin as she tugged on the chin-strap of the helmet, and the woman nodded at Bethany, then at the other woman, as if to say, _Help_ _her_, and guided the little girl away from Fegley, as the Sorceri appeared to taunt the human guard, making him whimper and cry.

_Good_.

Bethany handed the woman her army-knife. They needed Fegley's thumb to get their torques off. And they needed to get their torques off, Bethany herself because…well, she didn't know why; without understanding her lineage, Jazira hadn't had any idea what Bethany was capable of. But the other women needed their torques off to protect that little girl.

Bethany had, strangely, never cut anybody's fingers off before. Oh, there had been that time with Uncle Ziggy teaching them about engines and his finger'd gotten caught, and there was the misguided incident with the bank and the cat and some stolen dynamite, but it hadn't worked out anyway, and nobody had actually gotten hurt. And it'd been Mel's idea in the first place… Her hellion best-friend. Melanie would _never_ have believed Bethany had just blown up some horned dude's _head_ with buckshot!

But Bethany was not the girl she had once been…or perhaps she was, she just…knew what she was capable of now. Like watching a masked Sorceri hack off some mutilated human's hand. _Meh_. She'd just witnessed worse going on in the wards.

For a girl who couldn't sit through the tamest of _Supernatural_ episodes without lights blazing and her best-friend drooling over Dean and Sam, the fact she had manoeuvred a labyrinthine gladiatorial cage-battle _without even a wince_ spoke volumes.

The hand came off gory, of course, and Bethany grimaced, fighting bile, surprised she felt absolutely no lust for the blood, the way Jazira said blood made vampires crazed. The only time her fangs truly ached had been when she had dreamed of Uilleam MacRieve…she wondered where he'd gotten to…a dip in her stomach accompanied the troubling thought, _He hasn't…been…_hurt…_has he?_

The Sorceri struggled with the hand, the gore making the thumb slip against her torque; Bethany made a tiny thoughtful noise, little more than the kind of squeak expected from baby-rhinos on nature shows, but the woman looked up, and Bethany stepped closer, gesturing for the hand as she tugged a packet of wet-wipes from her jacket-pocket. The woman's eyes lit up, and Bethany took the hand, suppressing a shiver of disgust—she could just see Fegley's expression in her periphery, gaping, eyes glazed with tears of pain—_Good_—and she went about…cleaning the hand. When the gristle was wiped away, Bethany calmly worked the thumb-pad against the back of her torque.

She felt the torque _click_, then it fell to the ground at her feet. She smiled, the Sorceri beaming, and offered her the hand. A blur of glinting metal flashed in front of Bethany's eyes, and in a split-second, another female, the one with riotous red-and-onyx hair she had seen burn people to ash with a blast from her glowing hands, smirked and taunted them with the hand she had snatched from her. Bethany glowered as the other Sorceri, the one with the short haircut who could apparently control stone, sauntered past, donning a pair of claw-tipped gloves and a mask. The two women spoke to the other Sorceri, and to the emerald-eyed female with her little one.

Neither of the two new females wore their torques.

"_We like the odds, with all of you powerless. Ember, do immolate the warden_," the short-haired one said, Bethany glowering as she read her lips. They dared put the little girl's life in danger keeping her guardians powerless? As the fire-wielding Sorceri aimed a glowing palm at Fegley, Bethany cocked her head appraisingly at the short-haired one. Instinct took over, the way it had with the incubus, and the Invidia, fangs sharpening with aggression, her claws flaring; something strange happened to her, without the torque, instincts bombarded her, scents confused her, her sight strengthened exponentially, vitality flooded her as instincts demanded she act, _eviscerate_, _protect_…

The Sorceri didn't see her coming.

Something warm and silky oozed over her hands a second later. She cocked her head to the side, confused…blood still warm splattered her face, she could feel it, wanted to flick out her tongue and taste it, _couldn't_—she had used her claws to stab through the female's throat, one hand ripping downwards, the other prising upwards, until the female's head had come clean off with a spurt of blood that gushed over her hands. The head rolled, the body crumpling at her feet. The female she had seen raise mountains now lay at her feet in pieces, the same way the incubus and the Invidia had died when they had attacked her.

They had underestimated her. She hadn't known she could _do _that. It was unconscious. She flicked her eyebrows up, surprised. Surprised she had killed another living creature mere moments after beheading that demon with her shotgun, and…she didn't feel _anything_. No remorse, no anxiety, no soul-crushing guilt. Just…annoyance. She scented rage and flicked her glance up, clocking the fire-wielding Sorceri shrieking in rage and shock, a smouldering pile of ash all that remained of Fegley behind her.

_Never let them sense weakness_, Jazira had advised her. _Brazen it out, sugar_, her mama would say. Shoulders back, Bethany levelled the fiery Sorceri with an uncompromisingly stern glare, unconsciously peeling her lips back to reveal her fangs in a show of aggression, her claws still flared, blood-soaked. For what seemed like an eternity, the fire-witch stared back, eyes ablaze like liquid flame, wrath emanating from her very pores, Bethany could scent it…but she didn't attack. She seemed…_wary_.

Her own shoulders going back, the fire-witch turned desolated eyes onto the _parts_ that had once been her companion, then addressed the little girl, "_Remember what we told you, Ruby_." Then she was gone, disappearing as swiftly as she had first appeared.

The Sorceri and the two sparkly-eyed witches all stared open-mouthed at Bethany. She flushed, shrugged awkwardly, and bit the inside of her cheek, stepping away from the dead Sorceri, whose body had slumped heavily onto her boots. She winced guiltily and glanced at the little baby-witch, who gazed at her with something close to idolatry. The woman yanked the little girl around, scowling; Bethany read her lips, relieved she did not warn the little girl to stay away from her. Bethany would never hurt her.

Instead, the witch demanded, "_What did they tell you_?"

That conversation wasn't Bethany's to watch; instead, she followed the remaining Sorceri's lead in seeking weapons from the picked-over remains on the shelves. She had never even seen a real-life sword before coming to this hellhole; bow-hunting was something some of Thad's friends enjoyed with their dads, but Bethany wouldn't know where to begin—Katniss Everdeen she was not!

She was surprised by one thing, though…that guilt didn't cripple her. She had killed two people…an evil demon and a female she had _seen_ pulverise men's heads like grapes with her ungodly stone-controlling powers, who had threatened the safety of these two powerless women and the little girl who should never have been brought here in the first place. She realised what they said on TV was true; you could get away with murder just as long as you _didn't tell anybody about it_. There was no staggering, petrifying guilt locking her frozen in place, she just…turned to the shelves, sorting through lethal metal whips, antler headdresses, blades of every shape and design, even a small suitcase or two, trying to find something she could wield without getting her ass handed to her.

A twin-bladed battle axe. Golden in colour, burnished, lethally sharp with copper details and a grip made for both hands, Bethany fell in love with it at first sight; she picked it up—it was about the same weight as her baseball-bat, heavier at one end but balanced with a strong grip. She could examine the details later. Moving out of the way of the women and the little girl, Bethany practiced swinging the axe, getting accustomed to the way the weight was disbursed, how it felt in her hands, how much strength she needed to use to really give it some bite. A blade was only lethal when you knew how to wield it, as Jazira had advised her. They'd only done practical hand-to-hand; Jazira had taught her the very basics of armed combat. But Bethany was an All State baseball player—on the boys' team at Harley High, she'd never suffer the indignity of being relegated to the inferior girls' _softball_ team!—and if she wanted to, she could really give her swings a bite.

Harley may be a football town, but everybody knew that if Bethany Brayden threw you a baseball, your hand would sting for a week. Despite any glove. And her hits?

She was the "Home-Run Mama" of Harley.

It wasn't a baseball-bat, but the twin-bladed axe felt remarkably familiar—and a hundred times more lethal—in her hands.

_This will work_, she thought, catching the Sorceri's eye. The two women plucked swords from the shelves, hastily donning sheaths, and they held the swords as if familiar with them; Bethany clutched her axe, glancing at the little girl, who was toeing the dead Sorceri's body with her little boot. Bethany glanced down at the Sorceri. Jazira had told her Sorceri worshipped gold, that the reason they decked themselves out in precious metals was because they were physically one of the weakest Lore races; they wore gauntlets to give themselves claws, and their masks were said to unnerve their enemies.

Might made right, and everything came for a price, that's what Jazira had taught her. If Bethany got out of here…somehow, she knew soul-deep, she couldn't just…return home.

She had to rebuild. Couldn't do that without cash—and the fallen Sorceri's mask and breastplate were some kind of etched black gold set with onyx gems. Having a considerable rack, Bethany couldn't understand wearing _metal_ over one's breasts, but with teeny tiny boobs as the Sorceri had—_once had_, she remembered, _you killed her_—she supposed it didn't really matter. She plucked the mask from the severed head, undressing the breastplate from the body, carefully tucking both into the top of her pack. _Now where to pawn them once we get out of here…?_

She sighed, glanced around, and her eyes locked on a whip; it wasn't made of metal, or barbed with blades, but the handle was embellished; she picked it up, eyeing it curiously, and at a glance at the little girl, Bethany smiled to herself. The poor thing probably hadn't been given any toys or books or _anything_ to keep her amused, who knew how long she'd been stuck here. She reached to tap the little girl on the shoulder, set the axe down, and took both ends of the whip. She started jumping-rope, careful of her injured chest. The little girl's eyes shimmered with delight, and she stuck out her hand for the makeshift toy, as the two women examined something at the back wall. The emerald-eyed witch glanced over her shoulder, jerking her head at Bethany to join them; she picked up the axe, leaving the little girl jumping-rope happily in her bullet-proof vest and tutu, and joined the women. It didn't escape her notice that she was taller than them by a foot, and their jaws were lax as they craned their necks to look up at her.

She sighed heavily, glancing down at them, but focused, realised they were trying to prise open a secret doorway. _Cool_, she thought. This was all very _Indiana Jones_-meets-_Alien_.

_You couldn't watch _Alien_, weirdo_, she reminded herself. Well, from now on, she'd be watching horror-movies with a smile and a giggle at the unrealistic special-effects. Trying to prise the door open with the tip of a sword and the Sorceri's claw-tipped gauntlets proved exhausting; Bethany eyed the door, her axe, then tapped them both on the shoulder, jerking her head to indicate they get the hell out of her line of fire.

She'd seen this in _King Arthur_—that was one mondo-violent movie she _adored_ due to the guys all wearing black leather and swords!—when gentle-giant Dagonet had freed the passage to the pagan-prison. An axe to rocks walling a door shut; instead, she was eyeing up the wooden door, choking up on her axe. Splinters flew, clouds of dust plumed, smoke seeping in tendrils from the ruptured ceiling, and she continued to strike at the wood until she had pulverised it to splinters. The two women raised their eyebrows, looking impressed as she kicked the remnants of the demolished wood out of the way.

A gust of fresh wet air caressed her face—the first she had experienced in months—and she sucked in a breath, her lungs protesting. A tunnel sloped downwards from the entrance.

They all examined the tunnel, assessing the ceiling, from which dust skittered at intervals consistent with the rumblings of earthquakes—they continued, despite the dead stone-Sorceri. Jazira had mentioned stone-demons…and the ground had already been compromised, the rising mountain pushing at the surrounding land…they were _on_ that surrounding land, and pretty soon Bethany knew from her Bio class, it'd start to fall away to alleviate pressure from the rising monolith.

_So_…enter a secret tunnel to a possible Shrieking Shack, risking collapsing ceilings and earthquakes? Or go back through that hell? The fact she had felt fresh, wet air on her face made Bethany believe the tunnel wasn't that far along, and if rumours were true and they were indeed on an _island_, it might come out on the shore.

_Never seen the ocean before_, she thought vaguely. She wondered _which_ ocean it was. And how they were ever going to cross it if they _were_ on an island?

The women assessed the tunnel, the ceiling; the emerald-eyed witch glanced over her shoulder, almost longingly, but she had scooped up her little girl (clutching to her makeshift jump-rope) and determination radiated from the women. Bethany scented the air, frowning, because a melange of different scents bombarded her, and she wished she knew how to differentiate living scents from all the other ones, the chemical-fires in the research labs, the smouldering ash that was all that remained of Fegley, the congealing blood of the dead Sorceri, burning flesh from the other wards. She could scent _terror_ and rage on the air, she didn't know how she knew that's what they smelled like, but she could also…scent _sex_.

Her skin crawled to remember what she had seen in the other wards; she put it out of her mind, deciding to take the rear as the women prepared to take the tunnel; as the only one without a torque, the most likely to first be attacked if they were pursued, able to hold her ground at least long enough to help them get the little girl to safety, she propped her axe against her shoulder and eyed the room as the ground trembled with another earthquake.

Just like that, the women were gone, pelting fast as they could down the tunnel, the emerald-eyed witch carrying her little girl, followed by the Sorceri. They disappeared from sight before Bethany's senses caught up, and by then, the ground was shaking almost constantly, a true earthquake, stronger than any of the rumblings before. While the ground shook, fissures appearing in the cement, dust and smoke whispered from the ceiling, a second's warning before part of it buckled—the only thing that saved her life, preventing her being crushed by a colossal rafter spearing the ground, aflame and charred, was a winged black shadow taking her by surprise, backhanding her with a closed fist, sending her sprawling, black and red dots obscuring her vision as nausea churned, landing with a huge _crash_ she felt vibrate through her as the shelving unit she collided with crumpled. The blades it'd housed nicked her.

Dazed, near-blinded by smoke and the pain churning from her chest to every cell in her body as the _zipper_ was once again disrupted, tearing her skin and making her whimper as she struggled to stand…but she was tired, so _tired_ from her exertions, the most energy she had used in weeks, her vivisection still taking its toll on her still-healing—reinjured—body, and on her back, head lolling, the vest kept her wrapped tight, the pack still strapped to her back forcing her chest and stomach upward, the pressure alleviating from her injuries, it felt…nice… _I could…I could just…just close my eyes…just for a little bit…_

* * *

**A.N.**: Okay, so, this exhibits the first change in canon, Portia's demise at the hands of Bethany; also, I want you to know that I've also given Malkom a sort of adoptive-son. You remember the little demon boy the Viceroy tried to tempt Malkom to drink from? The one who scented of so much fear, Malkom lost it and murdered the Viceroy? What happened to the little boy? I find it difficult to believe Malkom, who had always yearned for someone to rescue him, would just leave the little kid to his fate. So I've given him a son who grew up in the water-mines with Malkom, kind of a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers isolated existence until Carrow arrives; and he was left behind in the mines when Carrow went to rescue Malkom. That will be rectified; and we will see Malkom's son in my _Lords of the Underworld_ story _**Back From the Rabbit-Hole**_, which features an ancient Lorean female for Aeron, whom we'll also meet in this story! Malkom's son's name is Jäk. And if anyone's seen _Four Brothers_, you'll know the character who inspired him; Jack Mercer.


	6. The Hunt

**A.N.**: I have just come up with _the _most brilliant plot-bit about Uilleam's Instinct, and his 'brutal' past. It involves me being dazzlingly clever; inspiration from gentle-giant Dagonet in _King Arthur_ being all self-sacrificing and "You must not fear me" to the little boy; Bowe's pendant; and Néomi Wroth's telekinesis and weather-control… I amaze myself…

* * *

**Uilleam**

_06_

_The Hunt_

* * *

Fucking _succubae_.

Succubae had taken him—_him_, a millennium-old _Lykae_ male!—down. Gods love Regin and the black-lipped fey for their part in riddling the succubae with shards of glass as they escaped their cell.

Never thought he'd praise the gods for the glowing freakling who'd driven Garreth mad, but…

To be raped by five succubae while his _mate_ was out there…in this hell, this _chaos_? Unthinkable.

If what the fox-shifter had relayed to him over the last few days was true, intrinsic as she was to the inmate grapevine and cosy with the female leopard-shifter housed with his mate, the bloodbath that greeted him would likely be sending his mate into catatonic shock.

Most didn't handle this kind of introduction to the Lore…_well_. His friend Cade's mate and wife, Holly, the Vessel for this Accession, had been abducted by the Order of the Demonaeus, intending to rape her, claiming her womb in sacrifice to their gods—all while she had still believed herself to be human. Yes, she had slain all demons who had thought to ravage her, her Valkyrie instincts primed, but Uilleam's mate wasn't about to get struck by lightning to affect the change and prompt an instinctual bloodbath to protect herself.

Hell, the carnage was setting Uilleam's fangs on edge—it was the worst he had witnessed for centuries. They were _caged_, Pravus and Vertas alike picking off the humans, the unthinking Lore dregs turning on the leftovers, the Pravus shifting their focus to their powerless Vertas enemies, carting off flailing females for sex.

His stomach turned at the thought of _his_ mate being carted off… _Nay, she killed an incubus for merely touching her, she'll fight, protect herself_, he convinced himself, scanning the melee for those sunburned cheekbones and succulent lips.

The Valkyrie and the Dark Fey she had allied with hot-footed it down the ward, trying to find someone they nicknamed "Tiger", following La Dorada's sopping trail, to where the Enemy of Old had been housed near the Scârbă, Malkom Slaine—Uilleam came up short as he sighted the vemon before him; he was _torqueless_, and Uilleam gaped as Slaine took on any foolish enough to provoke him; Wendigos, ghouls, a giant Gotoh, crocodilae shifters, stunned Horde vampires with blood dripping down their chins from fresh feeds…

He was _fast_…Garreth had once gone up against a Scârbă, one that had attacked Val Hall, threatening his mate and several other little vicious Valkyrie; the vemon had traced away, and Garreth had confessed to wondering whether he'd have been able to kill the true myth. But that vemon had been red-eyed, a true turned vampire. Slaine's eyes were clear of the bloodlust. Like the Forbearers, Uilleam wondered how long _that_ would last…

Whispers along the ward said Slaine had claimed Carrow the Incarcerated for his wife. Both his demon mate, _and_ his vampire Bride. Will had actually spent some time with the lass, a comely bit with great tits and a penchant for flashing them in any bar on Bourbon, best-friends with his cousin Bowe's wife Mariketa—who would surely be scrying herself to tears in frustration, trying to find her.

_You too, Will_, he added as an afterthought. He could take care of himself…but it'd be nice for his family to come for him, as he would for them. Always.

And if the Scârbă had claimed Carrow for his own—if she reciprocated, it would make Mari…_ticked off_ if Uilleam were to maim/kill the male her best-friend loved. _Sexual politics_, he grated, severing the jugulars of two Horde leeches from behind as they thought to surround the Scârbă with several depraved brethren.

He was loyal to Bowe, and now to the witch Mariketa—and he would protect his family's interests and their friendships to his death. If that meant severing a few Horde heads to prevent the Scârbă being killed…he'd endeavour to suffer through it.

Amid a thousand distracting scents, Uilleam inhaled deeply and caught _her_ scent._ Have to find her_, he thought desperately, facing off against four guards—they separated him from his mate…he knew his eyes glowed ice-blue, but with his torque no image of his beast flickered over his face to petrify his enemies—even so, he was faster still than the mortals, ripping one's throat out with his fangs while ending the others' lives with swift snatches of his black claws.

He kept an eye out for Chase…red coloured his vision, rage taunting his beast like a child knocking a stick against the bars of a caged animal, _Chase_… The mortal _wasn't_ a mere mortal, that much Uilleam knew; if the rumours were true, that Chase was indeed Regin the Radiant's male, that made him a reincarnated berserker. Which made the mortal as powerful as any alpha male within the Lore, if he hit a rage. The berserkers of old had kept largely to the Northlands, doing their part to stop the spread of leeches from their Russian empire, not human but not entirely of the Lore either, clued into their world but still mortal. To find one here, in the form of the Magister of a Lore-hating order, was as ironic as it was maddening; Uilleam had been _thrashed_ by the male, in a way he hadn't experienced since the first days of his army training.

He was going to _peel_ Chase's skin from his bones.

And then he was going to _break_ those bones. And after that he would force him to endure a _Lykae's_ rendition of vivisection, for all he had ordered done to Uilleam…and all he had forced Uilleam's pretty-eyed mate to endure. _Need her_, he thought, his body thrumming at the merest hint of her scent among the carnage of other smells, the feeding, the sex, the blood and ash and gunpowder. His entire body responded to that hint of scent, but where he had heard from Garreth and Lachlain—and even Bowe—that the Instinct had roared sharper and louder than ever when first they scented their mates, he heard no whispering caress guiding him.

Nothing. The Instinct was…_gone_.

It had gone silent once before—_doona think of it_, he berated himself, gritting his teeth, and stole through the ward, severing jugulars with his claws and his fangs whenever anyone dared get in his way—he wanted to find his _mate_. He needed her. He would feel her heat against his body, savour the delicate taste of her lips, learn the curves of her body, take her till she screamed his name and remembered nothing of this hell…gods, to have those pretty lips sealed around his shaft—to pin her, those supple tanned legs wrapping around his waist, taking her as hard as he could give—to sink into the oblivion of her embrace…he _needed_ her.

Adrenaline coursed through him, spurring him on—need warred within him, his arousal so instantaneous when he scented her once again, the idea that he was _finally_, after weeks, going to see her once more, this time able to touch, to _taste_—he growled low in his throat, the sound reverberating through his chest, stalking out of the ward, to the research laboratories—carnage…he scented…her _blood_.

_No_! Panic flared, knew his eyes burned ice-blue as the beast tried to rise, but the torque tamped it down and he shook his head savagely, fighting the urge to sink into madness, scenting the air, tracking her, doing what he knew the Instinct would command, despite its silence—_Track her. Claim her. _Protect_ her_—and he found the PX store, picked over but still offering useful supplies (he quickly grabbed a pack and stuffed it full of food, clothing, beer and, thinking of the staples he remembered glinting on her flesh, first aid supplies, grabbing a sleeping-bag) and frowned, eyeing the demon whose head had been obliterated by buckshot. Her scent lingered on the leg of the body, perhaps where she had climbed over him.

Following her scent again, he found her _blood_, splashed against a rock that had thrust up through the cement floor, courtesy of Portia, the Queen of Stone—his fangs elongated with aggression, rage flaring at the Sorceri for inadvertently causing his mate injury—and followed her scent through the labs, his nose twitching, sneezing when the chemical fires burning in the laboratories obliterated other organic scents, but he could have tracked his mate over a hundred miles, chemicals would not deter him.

Finally, her scent grew stronger. She had found the Magister's quarters. He paused. _Why did she come here_? What could she possibly—he scented her, stronger in here than anywhere else, even the cell she had lived in for months; he scented the air, his mouth watering at her scent, but alarm flared as he scented more of her blood.

_Please, please, please_, he chanted to himself, begging the gods—she was in there. In a side-chamber lined with metal shelves, Loreans' effects and weapons tossed on the floor by the earthquakes still shuddering through the building, fire licking at some poor sods' effects, he could scent her, the mouth-watering scent overpowering the scent of burned flesh, crackling timber and congealing blood—he scented Fegley, but the scent was old, and he also picked up the scent of the witch Carrow, fresh but tainted with terror and…_relief_? Scenting the air, he frowned; a duffel? A worn brown-leather duffel-bag was tucked under rubble, an old, comfy-looking sleeping-bag rolled between the handles, and his mate's scent was _all over _it. Her effects!

His stomach dipped—he could provide for her. Why was her scent so strong in this place? She had come this way, he could scent it, but why not then had she picked up her own things. The duffel was considerable in size, something she might've packed for a short holiday—she must have clothes in here, things she'd need? Part of him delighted that he'd be able to surprise her with this treat, something of _her_ _own_ after being denied _any_thing for so long. He tugged the duffel out of the rubble, then frowned. Where in the hell was she? Scenting the air—he froze. A muted whimper rang like a bomb-blast through his mind, seizing every fibre of his being. He had never heard his mate's voice, did not know her cries, but every cell in his body told him that whimper had come from her. He followed the sound to the end of the chamber, stalking her.

He stopped, doing a stutter-step, shocked—before a roar of anguish and rage ripped from his body, the closest the beast had come to rising since the torque had been forced on him. His mate… Thick lashes brushed against high, sunburned cheekbones, her timeless features inexplicably peaceful, relaxed, even as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, those succulent lips glossy from blood—_her_ _own_.

She was unconscious—and half-buried in rubble from the partially-collapsed ceiling. She had managed to avoid being crushed by one of the hulking rafters, but debris had collapsed atop her where she lay. Why had she been lying down…on top of a collapsed shelving-unit, weapons glittering…her blood scented the air, stronger than ever before, and as he roared, his claws aching to slash his own flesh in his anguish at the sight of his mate injured, unconscious, bleeding, in _pain_—she was indeed bleeding, he could scent it, noted she now wore a stolen armoured-vest and a guard's jacket.

"Cleverlass," he said softly, calming long enough to take stock of her; the blood he had scented on that rock in the lab had come from her left shin, badly grazed from a fall.

And gods, but he was distracted by the sight of her legs. He didn't know how tall she was standing, but she wore the tiniest pair of denim cut-offs he had ever seen; they would barely cover the curves of her arse, he believed, his cock hardening to a painful degree, and her legs were _long_. _Very_ long, subtly toned and shapely, she had rather slim hips considering the length of her legs—wasn't it a rule that very tall females were rather hefty of figure?—and despite the graze on one shin, her legs were lightly-tanned and deliciously smooth-looking. He reached out to run the backs of his fingers along one shapely thigh, but fisted his hand instead, biting back a moan of longing. _No' exactly the right moment, Will_, he thought. He set to examining her for any other visible injuries, glad he had thought to pack the First Aid kit. If the shifter was right, his leggy mate would be in need of a few bandages. Visceral pain stabbed at him, the thought of his mate _injured_ almost too much to bear.

Though he could not see for the jacket and bullet-proof vest, he guessed the falling debris might have been enough to disturb the staples holding her skin together. The left side of her face showed a flourishing purplish-black bruise, and the beast raged within him to punish the one who had obviously struck her, and several blades had nicked her with superficial lacerations when she had fallen—been flung against?—the shelving unit, causing it to fall and collapse beneath her.

Despite being unconscious, she was whimpering softly in pain, the noise coming from deep in her chest, the kind of tiny noise a frightened young pup made searching for their mum, almost a _squeak_, and Uilleam had never liked seeing anybody frightened. Especially females. The last time he had seen a female so helpless—_Block it out, Will, you canna get distracted now…She needs you_.

He had never expected to find his female…_mortal_. Or on the cusp of her immortality. Either way, she would still take forever to recover from physical injury, if she survived them at all. She had survived a vivisection…and that staggered him. To be so young, to endure that, to _survive _it, to still be healing even now…

"You're a resilient thing, are you no'," he muttered, gazing at the lass's pretty face. He crouched down, leaning over her, and winced as he reached to tenderly wipe the trickle of blood from her face. There was blood on her hands, too, splashing up her wrists onto the sleeves of her stolen jacket—not her blood, the blood of…of Portia, the Queen of Stone. The _decapitated_ Queen of Stone, whose dismembered body looked to have been ripped apart by hand…claw-marks were evident where someone appeared to have prised her head from her body.

Uilleam's jaw dropped, his gaze swinging from the Sorceri's headless body to the halfling.

_His_ mate had ripped the Sorceri female's head from her body _with her bare hands_?

A shiver stole through him, his desire hiking yet again for the female before him. Turned on by his mate's vicious assassination of another female? He _was_ a Lykae, after all; their kind revered strength and aggression. And…and he had determined centuries ago that no mate of his would go without weapons training. He wouldn't have her be vulnerable and dependent on others for protection… _Doona think of her_, he commanded himself, his heart aching, memories threatening to bombard him.

He wondered fleetingly whether Portia had delivered the blow bruising his mate's left eye. Then he realised it didn't matter; his leggy mate had shown her what for!

As the building rumbled, once more threatening to collapse in the onslaught of an earthquake—Portia may be dead, but stone-demons had taken her lead, and the damage was done with the risen mountain anyway; the land surrounding would soon fall away—which meant the entire facility was in danger of toppling into deep chasms… And his mate was unconscious and injured; _he_ was weaker, more vulnerable than he had ever been…

_No, no' _ever, Uilleam thought, wincing as he tamped down more memories. The worst thing about immortality was just how many memories built up over time; good and horrifying ones. And it seemed only the bad ones had wanted his attention lately. He battered them back, focusing on his mate's pretty lips. Her whimpering had fallen silent, and he froze, every nerve wired, cocking his head to one side, listening…her heartbeat was sporadic at best, weak, and with her every laboured breath, she struggled to fill her lungs, a tiny wheezing noise accompanying every inhalation.

Sporadic heartbeat, trouble breathing, the blood that had trickled from her lips was her own…internal bleeding? She could…she could _die_. She had survived a vivisection, taken _weeks_ to awaken from it, able to move incrementally every day, so said the shifter, but if it was bad enough, if she didn't _heal_… She could _die_.

_No_!

What to do? It had been a long time since he had cared for a mortal. Tears burned his eyes, threatening, and he tamped even more memories back. How to help her? He had to get her out of this place, but he was physically weak, and as a Lyka royal, there would be Pravus soldiers waiting to pick him off, pick _her_ off…

She was a baby _vampire_!

Lachlain had told him that wee Emmy had gotten stronger from feeding off his live blood; his immortal strength had passed to her, strengthening her every time she drank, prompting her healing after a vampire attack. Lachlain, tortured for decades by the Horde, had willingly ceded his blood to Emma, even when he hadn't known she was part-Valkyrie, when he had assumed she was daughter of the Horde, because his Instinct had roared to _provide_ for her. _Protect_ her.

Uilleam had no such Instinct…_ Gone_… He was on his own.

But Lachlain had never unwillingly ceded blood before. Nobody but Munro knew…his nightmares were his alone; Uilleam would not burden his family with his own terrors, not when they all had their own share of nightmares. As a young lad just starting his army-training, Uilleam had…had been _caught_. Young as he was…red-eyed leeches adored taking the blood of the young.

_Fewer memories_, they'd told him. _Less madness_.

And they had taken his blood. Mercilessly. And in the most demeaning ways possible. _Depraved_… That wasn't all…

Fighting bile, Uilleam battered the memories away—one glimpse of those pretty lips had his mind clearing, the beast within him clamouring for a taste. He had vowed no leech would ever again take succour from his veins…but his leggy mate could be…_dying_. The thought filled him with ice, gripping every fibre of his being. To loose her, just when he had found her, after all these centuries? He swallowed, fighting the lump in his throat,_ nervous_ for the first time in centuries, and eyed his own wrist, running his tongue over one of his large fangs.

To keep his mate alive?

_I'll do anything_, he vowed. He bit a gash in his own wrist, gently cradling the back of her head to prop her up, and his cock jumped, hardening painfully, at the warmth of those pretty lips pressing against the tender skin of his wrist. He noticed her lips were the tiniest bit fuller in the centre, giving them a delicate bow shape, the profile incredibly lovely. _Drink, lass…please drink…I could no' bear it if you…_ She didn't take, didn't part those lips. Too far gone, her instincts groggy… The beast crazed within him, clamouring for her, he remembered Lachlain's tale of finding Emmaline in Val Hall, dying… He bit his thumb, tasting his own blood, and gently pressed it between her lips, finding very pretty white teeth, and massaged the bleeding pad of his thumb over one of her upper-fangs, willing it to sharpen—finally, it did, so did the others, and he trembled, his cock hardening painfully, his beast in turmoil, mind reeling as he tamped back memories, and removed his thumb, offering up his wrist—and those little fangs latched on, piercing his skin, making his body reel with shock as he almost came in his jeans, the sensation of her delicately drawing his blood in slow, measured sucks resonating through his body, lulling him, making his eyelids droop with instant, unnerving pleasure… _His blood, her life_…

_Connection_.

This is what Lachlain had meant. Uilleam hadn't understood before, _couldn't_, had secretly been disgusted with Lachlain for what he had described, taking indescribable pleasure from the vilest act, sure he had deluded himself, for he had experienced the bite and lived with that shame every day.

This…his mate's bite…it wasn't what he remembered. It didn't trigger his nightmares—no, it kept him fiercely in the present, marvelling at the way his mate's body seemed to rouse even while she slept on, hesitantly, almost _daintily_ drawing on his wrist, almost as a baby would suckle in sleep… She started to move, her body wriggling and writhing, growing more animated as she continued to suck in slow, measured draws that kept time with the rise and fall of her chest, the throbbing ache in his cock strengthening with each draw. Soon, her long, slender fingers were flexing and clenching, as if clutching at something intangible, her delicately flared hips rolling, and when she drew her right leg up languidly, rolling her hips, and _moaned_ desperately against his wrist, that was it.

Uilleam scented her desire, for the first time with no barrier to stifle the purity of the scent. Nostrils flaring, he inhaled deeply, greedily. He was felled.

Dazed by her reaction as much as by his own, Uilleam's entire body was throbbing for this female who was languorously, desperately rolling her hips for a touch he would willingly give her as she daintily sucked on his wrist like a newborn babe.

When she unlatched her fangs, her features so relaxed and pretty, a smile curled the corners of her lips, glossy with _his_ blood. "Ach, poppet…" he gazed down at her, something seizing hold inside his chest, "you are lovely."

She _was_ lovely. _Incomparable_, his mind whispered. Timelessly beautiful features relaxed, glowing in sleep, dark brows neatly groomed, thick lashes, those high cheekbones touched at the uppermost corners with a healing sunburn that seemed to radiate vitality and warmth to the rest of her face, her skin prettily tanned, her nose very elegant. That hint of sunburn to her cheekbones intrigued him, the colour rosy and healthy, and he wondered…

He leaned down, gently brushing his lips against her cheekbone…he could feel her eyelashes flutter against his skin, tickling him, and where her skin was healing from a sunburn, it felt hot, deliciously so, as if she had just stepped out of the sun.

His vampire mate could go _in the sun_. He wanted to howl with delight, stick his tongue out at Lachlain like a young lad for bragging about his Emma.

_His_ mate could ramble through the Highlands with him in high summer, could pluck berries for autumnal pies and hunt truffles, sprawl in the heath in spring…he would take her on a bed of it, he thought, his cock aching for her… _His_ mate had tagged an incubus, an Invidia, the Queen of Stone _and_ she had slain _him_ with a delicate suckle of her pretty fangs while her slender hips rolled sensuously for him.

From now on, when he thought of a vampire's bite…his nightmares would not resurface…he'd be thinking of _her_, of wanting to burrow his hand inside those tiny cut-offs, to sink his fingers between those strong, supple thighs as she rolled her hips, to prepare her, then peel the denim from her and plunge into her like a piston… He shuddered at the image as it rose in his mind.

_No' the time, Will_, he reminded himself again, mouth gone dry as he swayed on his feet, lust rocking him, all comprehensive thought dwindling as his cock throbbed. Clearly, she hadn't drawn enough blood to dampen his arousal!

As she writhed, her hips still undulating languidly, Uilleam saw her expression flicker; she bit down on her lower-lip, those neat dark brows drawing close as a slight wince made her pant, and she moaned softly, thighs closing tight together… _Oh…_ Uilleam stared, open-mouthed, his eyelids growing heavy as he scented her desire again… She was aroused. By her dreams? By his _blood_?

Her eyelashes fluttered upon, temporarily unseeing, and Uilleam sat back on his haunches, instantly wary, battling the lust that was making him near-mindless, one absent touch from her all he would need to make him come in his denims like a green lad fumbling with his first pretty maid. Those sultry ice-blue eyes—never had pale eyes managed to convey such warmth, such rich emotion and…maturity—and sweeps of thick lashes flickered, realisation setting in as she writhed, struggling to sit, in the awkward position on her back on an upset shelving-unit, the ground uneven. Half-buried in rubble.

So carefully, hoping not to scare her, or hurt her, Uilleam started peeling bits of rubble from her. None of the bits were heavy, or sharp; it was mostly bits of plaster, shards of wood, a lot of dust, and it was quickly removed; she managed to sit up, groaning softly, then yawning, hiding her mouth, and stretching, her legs curling over one of the upturned shelves, her bloody boots pressed to the floor; her lips twitched thoughtfully as she eyed her surroundings, looking for something to perhaps help haul her off the floor. He noted the huge pack she had buckled and strapped to her back, which would probably make it difficult for her to find balance, given her chest injuries. He strapped on his own pack, in which he'd tucked her duffel, her sleeping-bag buckled to it, and stood up straight; she turned and stared up at him, eyes widening, brows expressive. Staggered by his height?

When he offered her his hands, she eyed them, swallowed, nibbled that plump lower-lip, and her breaths turned shallow, her eyes slightly glazed, curious, _lusty_…she was gazing _past_ his proffered hands, he realised…straight at the erection paining him, yearning for her, straining against his jeans. His shaft throbbed as if it felt her gaze through the denim causing subtle friction against his flesh, making his knees weak, and he knew, if she were to nibble that lower-lip again, or even run her fingertip over his slick head, he'd come so hard the entire building would feel his roar like another earthquake…

_Doona think of it…think of something repellent… Go' nothin'…so _fair, he thought, and despite misgivings about this amount of lust riddling his body driving him to force her to her hands and knees as he peeled those cut-offs from her, revealing her curvy arse, slick flesh… He shook his head, dislodging the thought before he could follow its climax to his own spontaneous orgasm, and reached down to seize her blood-soaked hands, giving her the lift she needed to climb to her feet.

She _soared_ to her full height, and Uilleam's jaw dropped, staggered, doing a stutter-step back to gape up and down. Standing, she easily cleared six-foot by several inches, her lips directly level with his chin…he could lean forward and brush his lips against her brow with ease if he wanted. Or he could just dip his head slightly, and brush them over that hot skin just beneath the far corners of her eyes, where the sun's heat and a flush of rosy colour lingered on her skin. By the gods, she was the tallest female he had ever met…and all of her great height came from those shapely legs. Very tall, her legs were tanned and gently toned, her thighs sweet and shapely, and he wondered if he could feel the gentle swell that indicated the top of the thigh and the curve of her arse if he were to splay his hands over her backside.

The thought had a growl rumbling up from deep inside his chest, and he gave in to it, needing to touch her, to investigate, to assuage his curiosity until he could get her the hell out of here, out of the bullet-proof vest and jacket obscuring her full figure, to lay her back, topless, as he slowly undid the button of her cut-offs, torturing her with his patience as she rolled her hips, needing him, and finally, finally, peel them from her softly-flaring hips…

Their packs would get in the way, but he would suffer nothing to rob him of this moment…to _touch_ his _mate_. So _tall_, she fit him _perfectly_ when he drew her close by the hand, drawing her hips to press gently against his…a heady feeling, _searing_…she responded so sweetly to his cock rigid between them, shivering, gazing unblinkingly into his eyes, a gentle flush colouring her cheeks as she shyly worried that lower-lip—she shivered again as she fidgeted, and Uilleam grunted in shock, eyes shuttering closed in ecstasy; rising to her tiptoes, she nipped his lower-lip, then gently suckled on it, her elegant hands on his hips, drawing him to meet the thrust of her sweetly parted thighs.

With a growl, he splayed his hands down on her backside with more force than he'd meant to, but she moaned, the movement only giving the thrust of her hips more force as he met them with a measured stroke of his own, his aching cock seeking the heat concealed by a mere strip of denim, so little, really, he could hook the material aside with his finger and seek that slick flesh.

He palmed her arse, loving how her cheeks fit so perfectly in his palms, perfect for kneading, and gave in to curiosity, fingertips skimming the seam of the cut-offs, confirming they _were_ tiny enough to give glimpses of that tempting curve marking the upper-thigh and the swell of her cheek, biting the inside of his cheek because he wanted to _nibble_ there…

He thrust hard between her thighs, groaning, and her eyelashes fluttered closed on a moan. Her lips caught his attention, and as he gave another slow, measured thrust up against her, she stifled a whimper of need, hands gripping his shoulders; he reached one hand up, cradling her head, and drew her in for a true kiss.

_Kiss her now. Taste her later…_

He wished he could take her in a fury, stripping those denims, pressing her against the wall, forcing her to take only the pleasure he could give, to ravish her mouth with slow, wicked kisses to take her breath away…but her body was broken. They were in a war-zone. If the rumours of her injuries were true…

Never had a chaste kiss seared his soul before now; but as he gently pressed his lips to hers, lust speared through his body, firing through him, making his knees knock, a tiny moan escaping him, so giving, so _warm_, he wanted to deepen the—

His tongue gently testing the seam of her lips made her jump, stiffening, and her eyes were stark and desolated, her cheeks pale, when she broke away from him. _It is true, then_, he thought sorrowfully, gazing at his broken little mate.

His _young_ mate. His _leggy_ mate with those uncanny sultry ice-blue eyes, and the healing sunburn heating the corners of her cheekbones with a healthy glow…

She flicked her eyes at him, a shy, regretful glance as her lashes fluttered, her eyes resting briefly on his lips with an expression so full of yearning, it felled him…his mate _wanted_ him as much as he did her…

And she couldn't have him the way she might wish…

_One kiss is no' enough…_ He swept his eyes greedily over her features, realising that she wore no torque; metal had glinted on the ground near their feet, but he didn't look away from the slender, sun-kissed column of her throat… Licking his lips hungrily, he caught her eye, and hers widened, her breaths going shallow again, before he leaned in and pressed a searing kiss to her throat…he felt her shiver deliciously, latching onto the belt-loops of his jeans as she swayed; he worked tiny kisses up her throat, her body jolting with a moan when he nipped her earlobe, melting into him; he dusted a kiss across that hot skin at her cheekbone, down to her lips, and drew her hand in his as he pressed a tiny kiss to her lips; as he cradled her face in his hands, he gazed into her eyes with a promise—"_You're mine_".

* * *

**A.N.**: I realised that, as a ghost, Néomi's emotions altered the weather at Elancourt, creating storms when she was feeling particularly miserable or angry, and she could also employ telekinesis while she was incorporeal—which _rocks_. Conrad could see her as a phantom because she was his Bride, but Nïx could also see her because she's ancient and powerful. And since Lore daughters tend to take after their mothers, sons after their fathers—personally, I'd like to see a glowing berserker!—it follows that Bethany would show more of her birth-mother's traits.


	7. Escape

**A.N.**: For _Morning Star88_ and _akashichin_, the latest instalment. Akashi, I will _definitely_ be putting in more romance/smut, and Bethany will be _waaaaay_ better than runtling Emma. Actually, that'll be a plot-point, that Bethany can't be _bought_ the way Lachlain gave Emma a credit-card and said, "Shop till I drop," and she decided she'd stay in Kinevane!

* * *

**Uilleam**

_07_

_Escape_

* * *

She had read the promise on his lips—"_You're mine_", felt a soul-deep connection sizzling through her entire body as he grasped her hand in his huge, warm paw; the moment broke when an earthquake trembled, his eyes firing ice-blue as he gazed upwards, discerning the precarious ceiling, and she swore he bit out a curse before scanning the shelves—Bethany squatted to pick up the axe she had dropped by the feet of the headless body of the Sorceri she had killed…_the women! the little girl!_ _what happened to them_?—the Lykae snagged what appeared to be his own sword; his eyelids drooped heavily with blatant relief, and he unhooked the strap from the end of the sheath, buckling it around his hips, his sword-hand gripping the hilt firmly as he held out his other to her, his eyes returning to that mesmerising gold.

She placed her hand in his once more, feeling ice melt away as she shivered, his heat transferring to her; never more attuned to her own body than since this place, she felt…different. She felt _alive_. She didn't feel lethargic, pain-drenched and miserable. She had dreamt of _him_…the male who had thrust an agonisingly huge erection against her as she'd desperately sought to ease her own ache—who'd let her nip and suckle his lip—_How embarrassing_, she blushed—and who'd clapped his hands on her ass with enough force to make her feel it for days, but how _delicious _had it felt, not a spanking but…a message. _Mine_, it had seemed to claim. She had dreamed of him, woken aching to be filled and touched and kissed everywhere, wanting his big hands on her, needing something to fill the empty ache between her thighs…and there he'd been, gazing at her with such blatant appreciation, she had felt drugged by the unfamiliar attention.

And the sight of his erection straining against his denims… He was likely _huge_. And Bethany had ached to rip those jeans away from him, unfamiliar urges thrashing through her, her fangs throbbing, to _see_, to touch, to feel that heat and the strain, to _lick_… She sighed, her good mood dissipating…_lick_… She followed him out of the storage-room, her body still thrumming with…_vitality_. She felt so good, she felt…as she had before she had been brought here. Alive. Strong, and _excited_. Not deadened from captivity, pain and neglect. Yes…she felt _alive_.

_Why_?

_Something_ was thrumming through her veins, besides lust…had she been drugged? She didn't think so. Anyway, no drug could make her feel this good after being vivisected and smacked across a room, nicked by blades after crushing a metal bookcase, a ceiling raining plaster down on her.

His hold on her hand tightened briefly as they exited Chase's office, like a warning; he glanced over his shoulder, locking eyes with her, a warning? A promise. They would get out of this—_he_ would get her out of this. And she'd have to follow his lead, no letting distractions get in the way.

"_Ready_?" His lips were _lovely_.

She swallowed, giving herself a mental shake, taking in the new heights the level of carnage had reached inside the research ward; she glanced at the Lykae, and nodded. He indicated a countdown with his fingers, pointing out the direction they were headed, and she took a deep breath, nodding, glancing at his fingers…

_Three…wonder what those fingers'd feel like inside me—two…mind outta your panties, Bethany Brayden!—one…_

They ran. Or, strode quick as they could over the debris of dismembered bodies, collapsed ceiling, dead monsters, crushed weapons, shards of metal and glass, flaming rafters, smouldering fires, slipping and sliding over the gristle coating the cement; the Lykae kept his shoulders back, hand on his sword-hilt, just in case, appearing to scent the air for approaching danger, changing their course several times, pinning her against a wall, hand clapped over her mouth until a band of Wendigos had passed, clawing at each other to get to a bloodbath in another passage; the Lykae was leading them to the exit; seconds before they reached it, he reached out, plucking the hood of her jacket up, carefully tucking it over her head, pulling the toggle so the hood couldn't be whipped back. This thoughtful gesture made her go all warm and _gooey_, smiling shyly, at least…before they stepped through the hole blasted through an exterior wall.

_Rain_.

Not just rain. A true _storm_. Thunder, lightning—more than she had ever seen—torrential rain falling not just vertically, but hitting them horizontally, the wind so strong she was nearly knocked straight off her feet, goose-bumps rising all over her body, rain leaking down her boots, soaking her socks, her bare legs frozen…though she had to admit, the cold soothed the seeping ache of her grazed shin.

The Lykae scented the air again, his eyes blazing that eerie ice-blue she was quickly becoming infatuated with, enthralled every time his eyes flickered from that rich, decadent gold to icy, incandescent topaz, and started running down the slope unerringly in one specific direction. Shadows ran in other directions, none approaching them, each wanting escape. Bethany followed the Lykae, revelling in the feeling of being able to stretch her legs, to _run_…she loved to run, her favourite part about baseball, stealing home while the outfielders struggled to chase after her hit…she went running with Thad every day, for miles and miles…

_Miss him_…

Free. She was free. She could see her twin-brother again… The thought made her chest ache with a pain her vivisection had never managed to make her feel.

They may be stuck on this island, but this was the first time in months Bethany had been out in the fresh air…and she suddenly realised why Thad pouted over doing wind-sprints during practice. She hadn't exercised properly for months; her yoga with Jazira had kept her a little toned and more bendy than she'd ever been, she guessed, and while she was comatose Jazira and Paris had done stretches for her, circulating her blood, but there was nothing like full-out exertion, the burn in her legs, the searing feeling in her lungs as she gulped deep breaths, the spray of the rain icy against her face, the cold cutting so deep. She was alive. And she was free.

And she was running hand-in-hand with the most attractive male she could ever have imagined.

An explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet, making her lose her footing; stumbling, she glanced back—and tried to yell out, eyes wide, trying to pick up the pace and dart out of the way as an enormous stone plummeted toward them from the mountain that had risen from the inside the facility out and up, surrounded by great whirling vortexes of flame from that fire-Sorceri… _Whoa_…

The Lykae shoved her out of the way at the last minute, sending her flying. She bit the grass, water splashing her face, the fragrance of the fresh grass heaven to her, her chest aching but protected by the armoured vest from the impact, and her booted feet scrambled for purchase against the slick grass, butt in the air, shoving herself upright, struggling to balance the pack, whirling around to spy the—her Lykae was stuck, his leg pinned beneath the stone, big as he was tall, his staggeringly handsome face grimacing in pain, unable to shift it due to his torque, his black claws raking the glass as his eyes flashed in fury.

_Shit_, she swore, glancing around, terrified they would be attacked—she bit her lip, clutching her axe tight in one hand, assessing the tone. As he twisted and glared with those eerie topaz eyes, fangs sharp, his lips moved with an order she ignored; he looked furious for about a split-second, before she squatted right beside him; he looked stunned, his jaw dropping, golden eyes wide as they honed on her ass, as she bent and dug her free hand beneath the stone… Vampires were strong, Jazira said; whatever Bethany was…she carried this heavy pack, no trouble, she'd pulverised that door, prised a woman's _head_ from her shoulders with her bare hands…and they didn't have time to spare digging or searching for somebody to help…Pravus soldiers would behead him on principal for being a Vertas leader…if Wendigos found him they'd suck the marrow from his bones while he watched…

She inhaled deeply, sighed, and lifted. She flung the boulder away as if it were no heavier than her old school book-bag. She blinked, stunned, and the Lykae's jaw dropped again.

So…she was strong. _Cool_.

With her lineage undetermined, Jazira had said there was no telling what Bethany could do. Any kind of Lore halfling always had their unique quirks…

She offered the Lykae a hand, and he dazedly accepted the offer, his features a mask of surprise, gazing at her with those decadent golden eyes; she helped haul his huge body upright; his leg was bloody, his jeans tattered, and, looking him up and down for more injuries, she realised how much weight he'd lost since the first time she had seen him. And he was shirtless…

Her fangs ached. The image of Jazira riding Paris suddenly flashed through her mind, and her fangs sharpened with aggression as she wondered who'd serviced _him_ before their jailbreak…

He grabbed her free hand, eyes flickering ice-blue as he took in her expression, and led her off, toward the woods… Running, running, through storm-ravaged woods, ever in an upwards incline; Bethany loved it, but she was…_tired_; she was out of shape; and she was injured… The Lykae seemed set on following a specific path, clearing brush with his claws to guide her through a path _he _himself made, up the forest-carpeted incline, away from the Order's facility, now the site of a minor apocalypse, bomb-blasts rocking the ground even as the storm raged, soaking her to the skin, until her little fangs chattered without cease.

She was definitely still _on the cusp_—a true immortal wouldn't be feeling the elements the way she was right now; of course, she'd have healed from her vivisection overnight… Her Lykae led her on, the heat emanating from his hand searing her skin as he clutched hers, pausing now and then to help her over washouts and fallen tree-trunks, labouring over the upward, rocky terrain, buffeted by the gale, the rain hampering their vision…at least hers. He didn't seem to care about the rain, his bare chest, his limp, but if she stumbled, or made a tiny noise of fatigue or pain, he would stop, eyes wide; he would cradle her face in his huge, calloused palms, gazing so deeply into her eyes she thought he tried to read her thoughts, and he would give her the tiniest of butterfly kisses, against the tip of her nose, her cheekbones, her lips, even giving her lower-lip a nip, the way she had teased _him_, when she'd stumbled, nearly twisting her ankle in a rabbit-hole.

Each kiss made her blood pump, her heart racing, and that tiny kick of adrenaline helped her push on, up the slope of a _mountain_.

_Never been on a mountain before_, she thought, but she was too cold, too wet, too tired, too aching and too miserable to enjoy that she was ticking off one of the entries on her list of life experiences.

If she got off this island, she'd have an eternity to tick things off that list…heck, she guessed she no longer had any kind of excuse not to work her way through the literary classics as she'd always promised herself she would. She could go travelling…

She couldn't go home, she knew that.

She still couldn't figure who'd snitched and brought her here in the first place, but she knew things would be hell of complicated if she went back to Harley. Besides…could she really face the town after what happened?

She wondered how her family was taking it…whether they thought… She wondered if they missed her, were worried about her. Their family had already lost so much, with her daddy dying so suddenly. It had changed everything. Thad had been man of the house since they were kids, and he took his job real serious; she hoped he was keeping Mama and Gram together. They were Texan women, after all…Southern belles…steel magnolias and all that, but, heck, her Mama could get real emotional.

She'd vowed never to watch _Titanic_ with her Mama ever again; she just didn't _get_ _it_.

Suddenly, Bethany _craved_ their battered old sofa, with the hand-crocheted afghan thrown across the back, their scarred coffee-table piled with magazines, nail-polish bottles, Thad's football, Gram's sewing and glasses of sweet-tea, packets of _Redvines_, _Dots_ and _M&Ms_, homemade Brigadeiros she was famous for, a bowl of popcorn and sweating cans of soda, a movie playing on their grainy old TV… She'd endeavour to try and get through _Titanic_ one more time if only she could get off this island and curl into bed with Mama, the way she had as a little girl, the way she still did when she was upset at the girls' taunting at school.

She knew Thad would be taking care of Mama and Gram. Her twin-brother was her whole world, her sweet superhero; until now she hadn't ever parted from him, not in her entire life. The only time they'd spent apart was overnight slumber-parties at Melanie's, or in the last few years, football-camp. She _loved_ her brother, her best-friend; and she missed him like a severed limb…

She wondered how he'd handle learning what'd happened to her here…

As the Lykae Uilleam MacRieve helped her clamber up a steep, rocky incline, Bethany eyed him, instinctively knowing Thad would appreciate this male's concern and care for her, protecting her…even if he'd go crazy if he got a hint of what the Lykae wanted to do to her…

Jazira had hinted at what a Lykae's sexual appetite was like…_insatiable_…

She appreciated what he was doing for her, too, knowing everybody could've just left her to the dogs, saving themselves…he had searched her out in Chase's office, stopped her getting crushed by a boulder that had to have hurt him bad…but he never slowed, never paused to grimace and rub his leg, despite his limp.

The incline levelled out after what seemed an age, and after what seemed another age, along a gently-inclined, craggy path, they reached a large ledge, trimmed with trees, the tips whipping in the gale but the rest of the area sheltered from the wind—and she shivered, her instincts flaring, just as Uilleam gripped the hilt of his sword, seeing glowing eyes, hulking figures…in the darkness, _she_ _could_ _see_, noticed—Paris! Jazira!

They weren't alone—none of their companions had their torques removed. Vertas soldiers! Most were male, a few females conspicuous in their mini-skirts, pointed ears and staggering beauty, and a lot of them were armed with weapons they must have taken from other immortals, or from the storage-room. Paris bore an enormous sword, and Jazira had managed to find herself a machete. _Cool_.

Happiness flared for an instant when she spied Jazira and Paris—they were both bleeding, but their injuries weren't major, and their faces lit with relieved smiles when they saw her staggering into the clearing beside Uilleam.

A blonde female, tall and lithe, emanating strength and predatory grace in every languid movement, strode forward, embracing Uilleam MacRieve like a brother; they exchanged a few words, but Bethany couldn't read their lips. _Gaelic_, she remembered; Jazira had told her the Lykae still spoke their ancient dialect.

_Scottish_, she thought; she had never met a foreigner. Harley was a small town tucked in _Texas_, for God's sake. She had never been anywhere in her life, and nobody ever went to Harley unless they had to.

The female was uncommonly pretty, frozen into her immortality in her mid-to-late twenties, her face a beautiful, wide oval with high, broad cheekbones, sumptuous lips lush yet firm, and her wide, large almond-shaped eyes flickered ice-blue one moment, then an entrancing whisky-amber the next; brazen laughter-lines fanned from the corners of her eyes, tanned eternally into her skin, but at the moment she was drenched and miserable.

The female's eyes flickered ice-blue the way Uilleam's did, and her expression became animated, blissful and proud one moment as she glanced at Bethany with a vivid smile, devastated the next, her lips parting, incredible whisky-amber eyes widening. After a moment, she called something over her shoulder to some of the horned males—Vertas demons, Bethany realised; and, when Uilleam squeezed her hand subtly and started off after the blonde female, she noticed the woman was also armed, an enormous sword strapped across her back, the kind of thing Bethany would recognise from Strider in _Lord of the Rings_, with two curious blades strapped to her front, with handles, as if she'd grip them in her fingers, lethal blades curving down her forearms while knuckle-dusters protected her fingers from blows against immortal bone-structure. The hilt of her sword was incredibly beautiful, decorative etching and inlays shining and glinting in the moonlight as it fought past the rain. Somehow, the moonlight managed to shimmer over the female's face—and that of Bethany's protector.

Uilleam MacRieve had his face turned to the moon, the most relaxed she had yet seen him, basking in its light the way others drenched themselves in the sun's rays. The moonlight seemed to caress his features, lovingly stroking the high cheekbones, strong jaw, limning his rain-spiked lashes… _A Lykae_, she thought, both seemingly worshipping and being worshipped by the silvery moon that called to his kind alone.

* * *

"You made it out!" Jazira cooed, throwing her arms around the giant halfling, so little compared to the Texan, she managed to catch her around the waist, an enormous pack strapped to her back impeding a true embrace. Distracted by the chaos in the facility, they had lost track of each other; Jazira had been cornered by dregs of the Lore and amphibious shifters wanting to pick off their Vertas mammal-shifter enemies, and they'd figured this little immortal in her cute pink suede booties was an easy target. _Fools_!

And Paris had sensed _something_ on the air as soon as the glass had fractured, diving to eviscerate any male who thought to take a female against her will; his lifeblood, he could never stand seeing a female hurt. He had followed his instincts into the fray, searching, ending humans here and there, dropping immortals as they fed and raped in the smoke-shadowed corners of the ward, until he had come across…_her_.

He didn't know anything about this world, was _stunned_ at the extent of 'mythical' creatures and true monsters housed in the facility, grateful to Jazira for educating him as much as the incredibly tall—incredibly _leggy_—girl they'd taken on as a sort of pet, like the sea-monkeys he'd once given Torin. But when he saw the immense Lykae Uilleam MacRieve, who'd apparently decided Bethany was _his_—he recognised the harrowing ice-blue flicker of his eyes was the same as the hue _his_ female's eyes flickered with strong emotion.

A female Lykae… The strongest and most brutal race in the entire Lore. _Wonderful_. His boys would get a kick out of that…no docile little human for him, lolling about in his bed, waiting for him!

_Thank the gods_, he thought, eyeing the female, something bubbling up hungrily from his stomach as his cock distended further, hard to an agonising degree despite the icy rain searing through his jeans.

She had to be his… Nothing, not in three _thousand_ years of life, had consumed him so wholly as the need to find this female. For a millennia-old incubus who took multiple lovers at least thrice daily…that this female's scent had saturated every cell in his being, that the image of her fighting fang-and-claw against enormous winged demons and scaled shifters, their blood coating her, eyes flashing that harrowing topaz, her incredible hair flying, had his cock harder than it had ever been, his body thrumming with the need to touch and sate _her_…it was a brand-new and _highly-uncomfortable_ obsession.

He had followed his instincts, instincts he hadn't known he _had_, to seek out that female he had sensed…he wanted to make her _his_… The pure animalistic aggression he had witnessed when she fought made him shiver—with _lust_; he had never seen a female fight so viciously…he hadn't really seen females fight at all, knew he had never been able to handle their pain—seeing it, or delivering it—in Olympia, when he had guarded the god Zeus; he had always been the one his brothers-by-circumstance sent in to seduce information out of female insurgents… _Tough work, but someone had to do it… _

But the way she had fought, so feral, vicious, the way her body had _moved_, she wasn't like any female he had ever had before…and, if she had her way, he wouldn't have her.

She'd made that clear, her face becoming so gentle, so guileless after the fight was won, her eyes flickering over him, displaying her interest for a split-second before she had winced, a tiny frown creasing her brow; she had strode away, leaving him rocked by the scent of her self-denied interest lingering on the air, the sight of her delicate little nipples as they had budded against her top at the sight of him, that glorious hair tumbling in gentle waves, blood-spattered, to her bottom.

Now he gazed at her across the clearing as she introduced the 'Vertas' shifters and horned demons still wearing their torques; the Lykae seemed to recognise some, had knocked back beers and played rugby with others, had even warred side-by-side with two, and they all gazed curiously at the halfling.

Paris glanced at Jazira, who kept her eyes on the pass into this clearing, her arm draped through Bethany's as the young girl—she did look _terribly_ young, her face pale, drenched, her beautiful cascade of heavy curls hidden in the hood of her jacket, shivering, her incredibly long legs bare, one of them grazed from a fall—eyed everyone, trying to discern what was happening as much as her limitations allowed. She couldn't hear, couldn't speak, but she had gotten stronger day by day, while Paris slowly died of sexual starvation.

"So, what's happening?" one of the demons asked.

"The Queen of Stone is dead," Uilleam remarked, feeling bereft without the halfling's hand in his own, his beast stirring; she stood off to the side with the leopard-shifter, watching them all quietly, almost unassumingly. He indicated Bethany with a nod of his head, "The lass tore her head off, I think with her bare claws."

"The halfling killed a Sorceri queen?"

"Emberine will be coming for her," another demon remarked darkly, casting a sympathetic glance at Bethany.

"Those two never separated for centuries," the fox-shifter—an incredibly comely redhead—remarked, yawning. "If Portia is dead, Ember will have witnessed the assassination…and since the halfling is untouched…I wonder why…"

"Do we still no' ken what she is?" Ailith asked, her gentle voice musical, familiar; Uilleam had watched her grow up, an incredibly beautiful Lymon—the daughter of the clan's _eldest_ Elder, and her rage-demon mate—gentle but unbending, utterly creative and gifted, but feral when provoked.

_Màiri will be going mad searching for her_, Uilleam thought, eyeing the lass. The circumstances of Màiri's recent widowhood had been cause for great sorrow and fury among the clan, all the more so due to the complicated relationship of Madsyn's assassin…after losing her latest mate—older than time, it was said Màiri had lost many mates over the millennia, always outliving them, too strong to follow their fates—Màiri would be as any other Lykae was in her position; completely and utterly protective of the family she had left. In this case, her bairns by Madsyn, ranging in age from nearly seven-hundred to newborn.

And Ailith, second-born and one of a set of twins like Uilleam himself, was the favourite of both her parents. Centuries old, she was incredibly beautiful, and all in the clan loved her, despite being _other_…though, by all accounts, she took after her Lykae mother.

"No' a clue," Uilleam said, glancing over at Bethany again…still there… "But she's _strong_. A stone big as I am tall landed on my leg as we ran from the facility—she plucked it off me as if it were no more'n a rugby-ball."

"She wears no torque," one of the shifters observed.

"I found her in the storage-room beside Chase's office, scented Fegley—Emberine had burned him tae ashes, o' course," Uilleam said, a shiver going through him…why _hadn't_ Ember eviscerated Bethany for murdering her centuries-long companion—and rumoured lover? "She probably used his thumb-print before the Sorceri incinerated him."

"Where do we go from here?" a nymph yawned, stretching; several demons eyed her jutting breasts, nipples pearled against the soaked fabric of her top, but Uilleam frowned impatiently, thinking back to a year ago when his cousin Garreth had declared he had no liking for nymphs. What had Uilleam teasingly replied? "_Any being that sports a penis likes nymphs_". Garreth had declared them too _easy_. After that annual rugby-match against the demons, when Garreth had first scented his mate, things had devolved into an orgy; Uilleam himself had eagerly taken three nymphs. Now he couldn't remember the appeal.

The armoured vest strapped over his mate's front concealed the treasures he so longed to see for the first time, tempting him, _teasing_ him, that he still didn't know his female's figure…now the possibilities of discovering every inch of that supple flesh had him shivering, but not from the storm.

"That facility was modern," Uilleam observed, glancing over his shoulder, squinting across the forest now probably teeming with Wendigos, to the hint of chaos that marked the facility's location—explosions blazed, gunfire chattering, shrieks echoing eerily on the wind as the gale picked up. "If the mortals have been using this island awhile, they will have old buildings. Ailith—"

"I ran up ahead," Ailith said, tucking a lock of golden hair from her face as the wind buffeted them. She gestured at a shirtless male in the back of the group, holding up a bleeding succubus; the beast raged, Uilleam's sword out before they could blink, eyes blazing; _Vincente_. The guard the immortals all secretly preferred—a hand on his upper-arm made Uilleam freeze, both from the wet, icy touch, and from the realisation it was his _mate_ touching him. He glanced at her; Bethany rubbed her thumb gently against his bare bicep, nibbling her lower-lip, her expression gentle but enigmatic as she gazed at Vincente, unassuming, almost…_bashful_.

The Instinct might've said something like, _She doesn't want to see him harmed_. And because his mate bid it, Uilleam would have to let the mortal live.

"Vincente is with us," the succubus said simply. She was not one of the pod of succubae that had attacked him—she would be dead, of course, but she looked remarkably…_well-fucked_.

Ailith lifted her chin slightly, an expressive movement Uilleam recognised; it said she couldn't be arsed to punish the mortal, and they didn't have the time to argue over who got to dismember him, anyway; "He claims there is what looks tae be an abandoned monastery up the mountain. The path's all but destroyed, long neglected, but we can follow it."

"Ugh. _Monks_," the nymph grimaced. They would go against everything the nymphs stood for, Uilleam thought.

"Is it secure?" Uilleam demanded of the mortal.

"I went up a few days ago, in case something like this happened," he replied, his voice accented and rich. "It is dry, protected from the elements. But we will have to walk several days to reach it—at least, humans would. It is twenty miles from the coast…a little over forty miles from here." Uilleam swore, glancing at Bethany; her wee fangs were chattering despite her efforts to keep her jaw clamped. Could she make it?

"And where do we camp out for the night?" one of the demons asked.

"This island is crawling with Pravus—and armies of ghouls and Wendigo besides," Uilleam shivered. He hated ghouls and Wendigos. "They'll seek tae pick us off one by one if they can. Moving targets are harder tae hit." He again glanced at Bethany. Could she handle the exertion, with her injured body? And not yet immortal. "We should start moving now."

"We must find a way off this island before noon on Friday," the mortal said, and Uilleam did a double-take, frowning at the specificity.

"And why is that?" the leopard-shifter asked.

"The Order will bomb the island," Vincente said simply. The mortal wasn't one to mince words. _Good_, Uilleam thought. And he didn't appear terrified of them, another point in his favour. The succubus obviously had claim to him, but they would cut him down if he slowed their progress. "Incendiaries should already have been detonated all over the island." He checked his watch. "They're nearly an hour overdue."

"Technopaths probably disarmed them," the succubus gasped, grimacing at her arm, a deep laceration showing glimpses of bone. The mortal turned to her, concerned; one touch from his big hand had the succubus melting, relaxing, forgetting her pain.

"Then we have six days," Ailith said softly, her eyes widening; she glanced at Vincente. "Yes?"

"Yes," Vincente nodded.

"And how do we get _off_ this godsforsaken island?" the fox-shifter inquired. "I've a hankering for a Philly-cheese steak sandwich and I am _way_ overdue for a date with a hot piece of storm-demon ass." Uilleam's stomach rumbled…_steak_…

"With all this Lore energy in one place, I'm sure any who've been scrying for us will feel the distruption," Uilleam said.

"I thought Lykae didn't ally with witches," one of the shifters said dubiously.

"My cousin Bowe has since wed the Awaited One," Uilleam said, and eyebrows rose, lips parting in surprise on a few. Aye, his witch-hating cousin Bowen had married a twenty-something college drop-out who was the most powerful witch alive—now a sorceress, the Queen of Reflections. "And as Mariketa is best-friends with the witch Carrow Graie, the lass will likely be tearing her hair out to find her, all the House will."

"So, we just have to stay alive until the House of Witches can find this island?" one of the shifters frowned. "Sounds like a bang-up plan."

"If you've a better idea, we'd love tae hear it," Uilleam glowered, his eyes flashing. "We should start for the monastery now. In numbers such as we are, the Pravus will likely need tae strategise how best tae ambush us, and we all know moving targets are harder tae hit."

"Aye, and ken the monastery will no' be empty if others pick up the trail; we canna linger if we wish tae reach it," Ailith said. "If we doona claim it we canna think of taking it by force, no' with these ungodly torques, and your halfling looks like she needs shelter and rest."

"Aye," Uilleam nodded, "and she is injured, I need tae patch her up, get some food in her."

"I wouldn't worry about the food," the leopard-shifter remarked. "Bethany hasn't eaten a thing since she's been here."

"How's tha' possible?" Uilleam frowned. Even vampires needed to drink fresh blood…and she was a baby, too; she would need sustenance to survive, let alone to replenish her strength.

"Dunno, must be part of her lineage," the shifter shrugged.

"How long's she been here, anyway?" Uilleam asked, frowning. _How long was my mate caged like an animal_?

"Six months, give or take a few weeks," the shifter shrugged. _Six months_! Uilleam's fangs sharpened with aggression. Six months she had endured life in that ward, watching tortured prisoners being dragged past, seen some of the basest atrocities Uilleam himself had ever seen visited on other Loreans.

"Up the mountain, then?" Ailith said, glancing around, shooting him a wary frown, telling him to tamp back the beast—because he couldn't do anything to unleash it. The moon was far from full—he had _missed_ the full moon, stuck in that ungodsly prison with this bluidy torque diminishing his power, interfering with the moon's influence… And only the full moon had more sway than any mystical forces on a Lykae male in his prime who'd yet to claim his mate…

"We could chance the woods and push through, shaving time from our journey," one of the demons grunted, wincing as he felt a deep gouge in his thigh, leaning heavily on his sword—the ultimate sign of weakness.

"I, for one, doona wish tae be the plaything of a Wendigo this night," Uilleam remarked. No, he'd rather be doing something else…his gaze flickered to Bethany, who was shivering, her pretty fangs chattering, her face so pale.

"I'm starving," the fox-shifter grumbled, scenting the air delicately; her eyes went hooded as she gazed longingly at Bethany. "She has _food_."

"Come on, we need tae get moving," Uilleam said, checking their surroundings, a pang aching through his chest…the Instinct was truly silent, no whispered warnings or advice. _Silence_. "We can stop for food in a few hours, when we've put some distance between us and the facility…there were hordes of Wendigo, and I could see the glow of ghouls lightin' up the place, as well as Emberine's fire."

"How do we do this, then?" one of the shifters asked. They all seemed to turn to Uilleam, expecting him to lead them…well, he had once been General of his own army, back when the Lykae had had the numbers. He had fought alongside two of the demons present when he had been General, they probably remembered his skill.

"Ailith on point with Vincente; you will lead the way," Uilleam said, sizing up the demons, the nymph already getting cosy with one of the shifters, the two female shifters, one fox, one leopard—one's sense of smell would come in handy; and he had seen the lethal fangs on the leopard when she had fought off three crocodilae shifters—the bleeding succubus, the male shifters and the handsome incubus whose gaze kept flickering to lovely Ailith, his expression alternately bewildered and lustful, mesmerised.

Though Ailith had never noticed, that look wasn't unusual to see on a male's face whenever she walked past; wholly lovely, humble and shy, Ailith still didn't comprehend that males would do anything to have her. So the incubus had taken a fancy to Ailith? _Good luck, friend_, Uilleam thought; Ailith was notorious for remaining single; she was still wounded from the male who had betrayed her centuries ago.

Uilleam couldn't imagine anything coming between him and Munro; but then, neither of them had ever been in love. And Ailith's twin-sister Agnes had betrayed her with the demon male Ailith had loved; it'd broken Ailith's heart, and the twin's deceit had caused a rift in the family. Agnes had moved to Canada centuries ago when Lachlain had disappeared, no longer welcome with her mate anywhere near Ailith—or their mother Màiri. No Lykae would deny another their mate; but it didn't mean Agnes was forgiven. Agnes and the demon had broken Ailith; Màiri allowed the male to live, but did not speak to Agnes.

Uilleam had not liked Ailith's rowdy, attention-seeking twin anyway, was glad it was Ailith still living on the grounds of Kinevane. Bashful, more solitary than most Lykae, but self-possessed, she was nevertheless a complete darling, always sweet, surrounded by bairns from the village, and her own siblings, whom she adored. She was _kind_; but she was notorious for her long-fuse, and the devastating aftermath when she lost her temper. Uilleam had seen her fight in the last Accession—her first, when she had been a young lass—and couldn't name another female he'd rather have here to aid him in protecting his mate. Unless it was her mother, Màiri the Mauler.

Ailith was loyal to a fault: that loyalty had broken her heart centuries ago, but it also meant she would do anything for Uilleam, to help him protect his mate, as he would have her, had she someone of like value here… Judging by the way the incubus gazed at her, Uilleam wondered…

Shaking his head slightly, he focused; separating the shifters, the demons and the females into small clusters, assessing their strengths and grouping them so each vulnerability was accounted for and amended, he put Bethany in the middle of the procession, the females in front and back, the males bringing up the rear, those with the best senses taking turns to scout the path, the surrounding forest.

"Ales," Uilleam said, before they set off, and the affectionately-dubbed "Lymon" turned to him. He addressed her in Gaelic; "The Instinct tells you _anything_…I want to know…"

"Aye, then," Ailith nodded, her expression flickering to that heartbreaking sympathy she had shown him earlier, when she had delightedly congratulated him—the rumours throughout the ward had reached her ears that Uilleam had found his mate; and that he had found her in so fair a lass pleased Ailith.

She had asked what his Instinct said about the halfling, and Uilleam had had to confess…his Instinct was _gone_. Destroyed.

Her features had gone stark, devastated; to be denied the comforting presence of the Instinct was a painful thought. It was a painful reality. Ailith had murmured sorrowfully, "Ken we'll do anything tae help you get it back, Will."

"And you'd best hope _you_ stay alive long enough tae get home," Uilleam added, as Ailith turned back to lead the party alongside the mortal. "Or your mother shall have my hide for her hearth."

"Aye, she would," Ailith said, her smile wistful, longing; all Lykae families were close-knit, but their recent tragedy had brought Màiri's pack of hell-raising bairns even closer to their ancient mum. Especially Ailith, who had adored and idolised her dad… _He was a good man, Madsyn_, Uilleam thought sadly. The clan missed the rage-demon prince as they would one of their own.

Ailith strolled to the front of their congregation, ever unhurried, and she and the mortal started off. Uilleam was relieved that it rained still, if only that their scents might be obscured by the storm, to make it all the more difficult for enemies to track them. Not that it'd help much against the supernatural senses of those without their torques, but it might give them a little bit of a head-start…

Offering his hand out to Bethany, she gave a tiny curl of her lips, and reached to take his hand. She was _cold_. He could see goose-bumps all over her bare legs. _He_ had barely felt the cold, now glancing down and realising he hadn't replaced his shirt after removing the tatters of his old one, ripped by a now-dead succubus intent on raping him for strength… _Never again_, he thought darkly.

When his mate's sultry eyes—vivid with every flash of lightning that rocked the mountain—flicked to his chest, her gaze softening from the tension cold radiated through her, warm and lusty, his shoulders shot back.

_Oh well. Gives my poppet something pretty tae look at in this miserable storm_, he thought humbly. He asked her, drawing her attention so she could read his lips, "Do you want to stop and change clothing?"

She signed her response, shaking her head with a miserable lilt of her lips.

"She says they'd only get soaked," the leopard-shifter translated, eyeing Bethany's hands.

"Aye, then," Uilleam sighed. But as soon as they stopped, he'd figure out a way to warm her up…his blood heated at the thought…_and then you'll get some proper clothes on her, Will, so she does no' die of hypothermia, aye_? _Canna be thinking of your cock when your mate needs you_.

His _mate_…

* * *

**A.N.**: So, chapter seven, and we've caught up with Paris and Jazira, and I've introduced Ailith, one of my favourite OCs I created ages ago, just hadn't got round to putting into a story; she's the best, most expensive jeweller/goldsmith/weaponsmith in the Lore. Her father is another of my OC characters, the middle-brother of Rydstrom and Cadeon, Madsyn Woede. More on that later.


	8. Soldiering On

**A.N.**: Something to shock you all—an update!

* * *

**Uilleam**

_08_

_Soldiering On_

* * *

This really blew.

Except for the "rain-clouds" scene pre-Gollum's attack, _The Two Towers_ didn't exactly give an accurate depiction of epic journeys through the mountains. Through the night, they trudged on, ever higher, clearing the fir-trees, until they could see over the island, over the forest, the bleak mountaintops jutting to the tumultuous sky, the storm thrashing at them as they staggered along the path Vincente and the pretty blonde were leading them, growing more violent the higher they went, the sky inky-black, lightning blasting in volleys, light receding slowly after each bolt rocked the mountains…

She was soaked to the skin, regretted not having changed into a pair of the stolen camo-pants she had found in the PX store. At least she had the rain-jacket on, and it, combined with the armoured vest tucking everything close, kept her torso dry, the toggle of the hood drawn to her nose; her vision was hampered by the rain, and by the close circle of the hood drawn closed, her hair tucked safe and dry inside, keeping her neck warm. There was one good thing to having such a long mane of hair, she guessed. Provided it didn't get soaked; and if it _did_ get wet, with this weather it'd take _days_ to dry out.

When she had been a little girl, barely in kindergarten, her daddy had died. That had left her Mama in a predicament, with two young kids and nobody to help out; before Gram had come to live with them, the solution had been to sign Thad up with Boy Scouts and Bethany with the Girl Scout 'Daisies'. It meant they'd made friends, and given them activities to keep them entertained and not tearing around the house; sometimes they'd go out with other Scouts' parents for different excursions, working on their merit badges, and at least once a week they would be out of their Mama's hair at meetings, so she could get round to things that having two young kids made impossible. Like laundry.

In her troop, Bethany was now an Ambassador; Thad, an Eagle. Both of them had many more badges than the rest of the kids in their troops, because they'd both been Scouts since they were four years old, and had stuck with it while a lot of their friends had lost interest coming into their teens, when things like video-games and malls had dominated their afterschool activities. Bethany sewed Thad's badges onto his sash for him, and had helped him earn his Cooking merit-badge, and when she'd wanted to learn engineering, and log some volunteering hours, a requirement for high-school graduation, she'd gone to her twin-brother; they'd both earned their engineering badges logging hours at the motorcycle shop owned by their dad's oldest high-school buddy, Ziggy, and together they'd helped build a house for that Homes for Humanity project.

Gram called Bethany an old soul—certainly Bethany had always seemed much mellower than her eccentric grandmother—but she was a gentle giant who loved drawing, hand-sewing, scrapbooking, cooking and playing cards and backgammon. She was an _indoor_-girl. She had never truly _enjoyed_ camping and hiking—oh, she had her badges, and she'd earned her Gold Award, but what she'd liked most was the S'mores, and Melanie sneaking her hipflask inside her sleeping-bag… Bethany had met her best-friend her first Daisies meeting. By that time, Bethany had already been able to sew her Petals onto her sash, had taken such pride in the tiny decorative stitches most moms had to use fancy embroidery settings on sewing-machines to achieve.

Mama called Bethany's Scout sash her "armour"; it was laden with so many pins, badges, insignia tabs and patches that it flickered and flashed in the light, heavy for the embellishments, meticulously clean even over the years, each merit-badge attached with a different, tiny embroidery stitch in colourful thread. And Bethany had never been more thankful of gaining her Hiking, Wilderness Training and Survival badges. She didn't doubt her First Aid merit would come in handy too, the way her shin was burning. She'd need to bandage it.

She'd learned First Aid in case her Gram had a heart-attack… She wondered how her eccentric grandmother was doing…

_Step…step…step, eyes…open_… She put one foot in front of the other, yawning without trying to open her mouth too much, one hand grasping the handle of her stolen axe…the other, blistering hot in the big, rough paw of her Lykae. His heat seared her skin, making her shiver, different to the way the rain cut through to her marrow; if they hadn't been drenched, she'd have liked to explore just how calloused and rough his palms felt against her skin…

These folks set a hell of a pace, even with the mortal guard Vincente in the lead. He'd always been the most bearable of all the guards, seeming not to hate them all as virulently and blindly as the rest. He'd stopped her choking on her own blood…

She winced, stifling the memory, the incision down her chest aching in reminder; she let out a little sigh, stumbled, and righted herself before the Lykae's eyes could flash icy-blue in concern. They did that a lot.

Despite the rain, Bethany couldn't draw her attention from the Lykae's eyes…they were…mesmerising. Every time they flickered from icy-blue back to their golden warmth…they altered. Jazira had told her that the image of the beast flickering over a Lykae's face was enough to make aged vampires tremble with fear. She didn't mind the ice-blue of his eyes, the only flicker of the beast Jazira said was warring even now to rise, battered down by his torque… It was when his eyes returned to that breathtaking gold that something in her chest _ached_…because there was so much emotion churning in them that she just…wanted to wrap her arms around him, dig in her claws and _never_ let go.

The only thing keeping her from falling asleep as she walked was the cold, the wet. After the monotony of the cell, with its total lack of atmosphere, the temperature normal, no humidity, no breezes or heaters…this _weather_ was punishing. For a girl who'd grown up in Texas, wandering about barefoot half the year, in cowboy boots the rest of the time, barely donning a light jacket for wintertime, this raging storm was torture. She'd have loved the storm—if she'd been tucked in a pile of blankets with hot-cocoa and a delicious novel, maybe some sewing, or going through photographs to scrapbook, maybe a fire going. She wasn't romantic, but the sudden idea of snuggling up with this big Lykae with his tanned muscles and pretty lips, under a mound of blankets, a fire crackling, a big stew filling the house with its rich, earthy scent while it cooked…heaven. She rubbed her thumb against the side of his hand, even as the gale buffeted them, drawn to that image, plunged into the imaginary warmth of that fire, the furs, she could _taste_ the gravy-soaked carrots and succulent chunks of steak…they could pick at a pot of fresh Brigadeiros for a simple, decadent dessert…

And after they had finished eating, she would wriggle to straddle his hips, leaning her chest against his, smiling softly, before brushing her lips against his, her tongue teasing the seam of his lips to taste the Brigadeiros still sweet there. In his lap she would be able to feel his erection…she could _do_ something about it. She must have left him aching in that storage-room; his hardness was unmistakable. She hadn't even touched him…

She wondered how long he'd gone without. A male as gorgeous as he was, he surely had a lot of girlfriends hanging around, fighting for their turn…was he disappointed she hadn't reciprocated interest? Did he know that she _couldn't_? He had to be disappointed. Jazira had teased that Bethany might be his mate…which surely meant he'd have expected to find her able to slake his lusts…to have _any_ sexual-experience whatsoever. Of which Bethany had absolutely none.

Well, there had been the incubus, to whom she had awoken her first morning here, desperately trying to get his fingers inside her shorts.

The thought sobered her, brought her to the present with all the subtlety of a battering-ram, to the buffeting gale and the immortals trudging along miserably, a pace that would have exhausted her Girl Scouts miles ago. She didn't know how far they had hiked, but her toes were throbbing, contrasting the iciness in the rest of her body, but her shin was at least washed of her blood, and she was now so cold she was numb to anything but the heat searing her hand where the Lykae held it in his huge, calloused paw.

When they had all but climbed the mountain and met Julie Andrews for strudel on the other side, Vincente and the pretty blonde stopped; they had reached a huge outcrop of rock sheltering a small plateau that dug into the side of the mountain, as if it was trying to be a cave but couldn't quite get there.

Bethany wondered if she stopped, whether she'd ever get up again. She was suddenly aware of just how bone-tired she was, her exertions over the night catching up to her now that adrenaline leached and the Lykae let go her hand.

* * *

"She didn't complain once," one of the shifters remarked, eyeing the halfling as they paused, catching their breath in the would-be cave. Uilleam followed his glance; in fact, the halfling hadn't complained, made a sound of complaint or tiredness or even acknowledged any wavering of pain from her injuries, hadn't protested against continuing up the mountain-path despite the weather. Injured, probably suffering from hypothermia, definitely suffering exhaustion from her exertions after so long being idle, Uilleam's chest bowed with pride that his mate was…well…_tough_.

"'Course she hasn't complained," Jazira, the leopard-shifter, panted, hands on her knees, her tanned legs shaking; she had been walking in four-inch pink suede stiletto boots. Uilleam had never worn heels, but he'd heard they were dangerous and painful. He couldn't imagine why anyone would wear them—and glancing at his halfling, an ache in his chest soothed. She wouldn't _need_ to wear heels. She was inches taller than Ailith, even, and Ailith stood a lithe five-foot-ten, taking after her tall mother. "She has no tongue!"

If the halfling's own behaviour hadn't confirmed it when Uilleam had kissed her, there was all the affirmation he needed.

"Understand, if she'd made a motion tae stop, I'd've had a lean-to built for her and we _would_ be stoppin' for the night," Uilleam said, and he paused, his own legs shaking with exertion as he rested his palms on his knees. He could withstand extreme temperatures—most immortals could—but it didn't mean he _liked_ the gale. Oh, he loved lightning storms, loved being inside the warm, panelled halls of Kinevane with fires crackling in every enormous hearth while the rain thrashed the windows. He leaned over, shaking the water from his hair like the wolf he was, and unbuckled the straps of his pack, dropping it off his shoulders with a relieved groan; he rolled his shoulders, yawning, and glanced around. His halfling stood just inside the makeshift cave, her huge pack still strapped to her back, her legs bare, soaked and pale from the cold, covered in goose-bumps; her boots had to be waterlogged. And she was leaning against the cave-wall, her eyes closed, teetering as she barely kept her hold on consciousness.

Throughout their hike, she had just kept walking, her cold hand wrapped in his, her thumb sometimes rubbing against him, even as her eyes had drooped, her head lolling with every other step. She had to be exhausted.

"Look at her," he said affectionately; she was practically asleep standing up. The leopard-shifter drew her into the dry, sheltered cave, wavering on those long, long legs, one of which was still injured, but no longer bleeding, too chilled, he guessed.

They may not be staying here for very long, just enough for the immortals to get a few short hours of sleep to recharge the batteries, as it were, and jumpstart the healing to any injuries. His halfling would need more rest than the others, still far more injured than any of them, and as cold and damp as she was, it would not be comfortable. So he reached into his pack, the contents mercifully dry, for a few specific things; the First Aid kit, some spare clothes, and a little box of matches.

"If there're any twigs or dried wood in here, we need it," he called out.

"Are we to risk a fire?" one of the demons grunted, slinging himself down on the ground.

"My lass will likely have pneumonia, I need tae get her warmed."

"Better ways than fire to achieve that," one of the shifters grinned lewdly, eyeing Bethany. Uilleam's eyes flashed at the shifter, and his gaze faltered. _Mine_.

"Sorry, Lykae, but your mate won't be up for any bed-sport any time soon," Jazira remarked, with a smirk; the rest of the immortals too were smiling and shaking sopping hair out of their eyes, gamely putting the past behind them.

"Aye, I ken that," Uilleam said honestly. His mate was _broken_… _And I will spend the rest of my life helping her heal_, he vowed.

"Did you say something about food?" the fox-shifter asked.

"Aye, I have ration-packs from the PX store," Uilleam nodded. "Anybody else loot the store? We should take stock of our supplies, ration them."

"What's the halfling got in her pack?" one of the male shifters panted, yawning widely and flashing lethal fangs. A wolverine shifter, Uilleam guessed.

"Whatever she has in that pack is _hers_," Uilleam said firmly, eyeing the shifter and daring him to naysay. "If she is on the cusp as we suspect, she has more need of warmth and a full belly than the rest of us." Because she could still _die_.

"I told you, she hasn't eaten anything," Jazira spoke up, "not for months. Sure she'd love to, though, she always talked about her favourite recipes she'd cook me when we got out…just not now." The halfling was falling asleep where she sat; the shifter had manoeuvred her into the cave, onto the ground matted with old pine-needles, and she still wore her pack, her hood up; her features were relaxed, eyes closed, lips sweetly parted, though her skin was wet and _very_ pale, almost tinged with blue.

"Jazira, need your help," Uilleam said, and he tossed Ailith the box of matches to get a fire started. The shifter nudged Bethany awake, guiding her further into the shelter of the cave, by Uilleam. It was like tending to a child…memories swept up, and Uilleam's stomach churned as he tamped them back. Bethany was so tired, she allowed them to unbuckle the pack strapped across her back—it was surprisingly heavy, and she had trudged all that long way with it uncomplainingly, suffering from the cold and her injuries!

She _was_ a resilient lass!

Uilleam unclipped the sleeping-bag from her pack, rolling it out to give her something soft and dry to sit on; it was one of those weather-resistant army sleeping-bags that probably would've staved off a sniffle in the Antarctic. And it was still dry, despite having been clipped to the outside of Bethany's pack.

While the shifter got the halfling out of her jacket and armoured vest, Uilleam focused on bandaging the graze on her shin, wrapping it up tight with gauze, thankful the storm had washed away the blood and any grit and dirt inside the wound. He removed her worn snakeskin cowboy boots and drenched socks, squeezing the water out, and set them near the fire Ailith swiftly had blazing, disappointed that as the halfling raised her arms, eyes closed, bordering on sleep, Jazira gently removing the bloodstained white cotton top he'd first seen her in, all that glorious hair created a mane that obscured her bare torso, yet again.

He wanted to see her tits, damn it!

Uilleam had grabbed winter clothing from the PX store, hearing the gale outside, and now as Jazira leaned toward the fire, distracted by the warmth washing over them, Uilleam took over halfling duty. _Mine_, he thought. He wanted to be the only one to take care of her, to touch her.

He gently tucked a skin-tight black thermal Henley over her head, threading her arms through the long sleeves, and, body thrumming with anticipation, eyes locked onto her chest…the beast roused, all but howling, because…he hadn't seen her bare breasts or those nipples he remembered pearling so desperately against her top when she'd first seen him. As he smoothed the thermal top down her sides, her great volumes of long, long hair caught beneath the fabric, he could see the staples, and the incision that seemed to have just started fusing back together.

"Jazira?" he frowned, pausing. The shifter glanced up from the fire. "Why did you no' remove the staples?"

"I managed to get the wire out," Jazira winced. "I had to put the staples back, though, because she just…wasn't healing. She is on the cusp, so eventually she'll heal fully, she just…needed to be held together."

"But why did you no' take the staples out recently?"

"She was making strides," Jazira said softly, her face a mask of pain warring pride. "Every day she got back just a drop of strength, back to her old self. I couldn't hurt her again."

She couldn't…but, "It does no' sit right with me that she is still stapled," Uilleam grated, wincing in pain, kneading his own chest with the heel of his palm. It had taken him an entire day to claw the staples from his chest, and in between the times he had blacked out he had unknotted the wire holding his ribcage together. He was just glad his ribs had not healed over the wire. That would have been _incredibly_ painful.

"She's so chilled now, I'm sure she'd barely feel it if you took them out now," Paris said quietly, testing the halfling's temperature with the backs of his fingers against her shin.

"Can you do it?" Jazira asked, gazing wide-eyed at Uilleam. "She's yours, isn't she?"

"Aye, she is mine. Which is why I canna bear tae see her punctured through with bits of metal," Uilleam growled, knowing his eyes flashed, his voice layered with the beast more than it had been since coming to this island.

He hadn't yet put a shirt on or changed out of his ripped, soaked jeans; his hands would likely continue to shake even if he changed into warm, dry clothing—but he did, anyway; he kicked off his ruined jeans, tugging on a pair of camouflage trousers and a thick black jumper with leather patches on the shoulders. "Burn them, once they're dry," he said to Ailith, dumping his bloody denims beside the fire. Ailith chuckled softly, drying out her long, wavy hair, combing it with her fingertips. He grabbed the First Aid kit from his pack and frowned at the contents.

"Here, use this," Jazira said, and she handed Uilleam a bloody Swiss army-knife she'd tugged out of the pocket of Bethany's rain-jacket. Uilleam scented it was Fegley's blood, wondered if Bethany had cut him. "There should be a scissor tool; perhaps you can cut through them, thread them out…" She shivered, eyeing Bethany, who was shivering with cold, not anticipated pain. Her eyes were closed.

"Hang on," Uilleam sighed; he pulled a pair of grey long-johns and camo-trousers from his pack, a pair of thick black tube-socks, and ignoring the brief sight of a little navy-blue satin thong curving stark against her pale, chilled skin, around her slender hips, he had unbuttoned her cut-offs and peeled them off, carefully tugging the long-johns over her bandaged shin; the socks and the camo-trousers followed the long-johns, and he carefully tucked her legs inside the sleeping-bag he had sat her down on; instead of peeling the Henley top from her, he carefully tucked the fabric up to the beginning swells of her breasts—they were _his_, he thought savagely, no other male would glimpse them if he couldn't!—leaving the flat of her stomach and the beginning incision at her collarbones bare; he swept her great mane of dark hair away from her face and torso, and, gritting his fangs, he set to work.

A soldier all his life, injury and pain were an accepted necessity, an almost daily reality. _No' for my mate_, he thought, feeling the blood drain from him with every painstaking clip of a staple, tenderly threading them through scabbed cuts. She didn't wake; her exhaustion aided him, she didn't even moan in pain, so deeply entrenched in sleep he thought she would dream for days. He wished he could let her dream until they were escaped from this godsforsaken island. He knew they weren't out of danger yet, he didn't need the Instinct to tell him that.

The others, nearly two-dozen of them, had circled around the fire, were even now curled on their sides, enjoying the heat, while three relatively uninjured males took the first watch. The succubus and her mortal were curled in a shadowed corner, sharing a sleeping-bag Vincente had carried with a pack of his own; Uilleam's cheeks heated, glancing down at Bethany. Oh, how he wished he could slip between her thighs, warm her with his body, stifle her screams with his mouth as she came.

The nymph wasn't as subtle as the succubus. She and two demons were creating their own body-heat, providing a show for those who lingered on the verge of sleep, their eyes glittering in the firelight gently crackling over the howl of the wind, the flash of the lightning they were protected from in this warming cavern.

The incubus had coerced Ailith to join him, and he was gazing at her…as if she was one of the matchlessly beautiful jewels and blades Ailith created in her workshop, his deep sapphire eyes wide and blatantly appreciative, wondrous, as he followed the gentle curve of her jaw with his thumb, and Ailith…she gazed back at the incubus as Uilleam had never seen her look at a male, really _seeing_ him.

Only when he had removed the very last staple did Uilleam pause, sitting back on his haunches, shakily exhaling a breath as he landed on his arse, his hands still trembling. Bethany hadn't woken while he excised the staples, and he hadn't dared look at her breasts when he had uncovered them to remove the two staples clamped between them. He'd tried to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the weeping incision, pale pink and raw but healing, so slowly healing…but he stifled a shiver. It was impossible _not_ to have seen her breasts.

They were _magnificent_. Voluptuous swells, high and surprisingly perky for their size, with perfect little upturned nipples, a soft rosy colour, puckered almost painfully in the cold, making his palms itch to cup them, knead that giving flesh, to explore their weight and warmth in his hands. She would have the most enviable cleavage…

_Cover them, Will, before you follow the nymph's lead_, he warned, but he _wanted_ those high, heavy breasts, wanted to cup them in his palms, to clasp her to him and rest his head against that warm, giving flesh and _nuzzle_…

His hands itching, fingers clenching and unclenching in desperation to feel his mate, he took a deep breath, swallowed, and closed his eyes, reaching for the First Aid kit with a shaky hand. Two rectangles of gauze were taped in place, one, narrow, up her stomach, between her breasts, the other wider, taped over her upper-chest, the incisions from collarbones to between those magnificent breasts. He bandaged over them, keeping them in place, making sure the Henley couldn't catch the tape and agitate her. Then he carefully threaded a leather-shouldered jumper over her head, tucking her arms through the sleeves again, and he slid an arm around her waist, manoeuvring himself to sit with his knee propping her up; all that hair would become knotted if she slept with it unbound, he knew from wartime experience when he had kept his own hair in berserker ravel-braids, sometimes fighting for too many days together to cut his hair out of his face. So, carefully, he sifted his fingers through her curly hair, softly plaiting it, tying the plait off with a spare shoelace he'd found in the First Aid kit.

There. She was dry, bandaged, and with her new clothing, he could feel warmth touching her skin. Carefully, he laid her down, climbing into the sleeping-bag with her, manoeuvring her over him, gently holding her, and tucked the flap of the sleeping-bag over them, zipping it closed to cocoon them in warmth—the sleeping-bag's, and his.

The _feel_ of her. Those gorgeously large breasts pressed against his chest, her cheek against his neck, her skin warmed slowly, taking the heat his body offered her, and he could hear her soft, even breaths, feel her heart beating above his…his knee pressed between her thighs, she curled over him, _snuggling_, a hand curling on his chest by her face, squirming decadently in his lap to get comfortable, and Uilleam's thoughts suddenly blanked… His arms tightened around her, holding her close… _Mine_.

For the first time in eleven-hundred years, he fell asleep with his mate in his arms. Despite the howling winds, the thrashing rain, the emptiness of his stomach, the niggling worry over her injuries, he had _never_ experienced such contentment as simply holding her as he drifted off, cocooned in the warmth of the sleeping-bag, her lush breasts pressing against his chest, her slender hips directly above his, her cheek heating his neck, her nose softly nuzzling.

* * *

**A.N.**: I've had requests from _sthrnpanther06_ to update several stories, one of which is _Uilleam_, so this chapter was for you, Sara! I hope you enjoyed.

I've also updated _The Judgement of Actaeon _(Teen Wolf) and _Where There's Smoke _(The Secret Circle) and am working on _Jekyll and Hyde_, _The Eldest of the Pleiades_ and I will have to look at _Drunken Binges, Funerals and Formals_ (The Vampire Diaries) soon.


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